Stoneflies are highly sensitive to water quality and temperature, making them both important bioindicators and animals whose welfare is threatened by climate change and pollution.
As cold-water specialists, stoneflies face an existential welfare threat from climate change. Warming streams cause thermal stress and oxygen depletion that impairs larval respiration. As headwater glaciers and snowpacks diminish, the cold input that maintains stonefly habitat disappears. This causes population collapses with cascading effects on the fish and birds that depend on stonefly larvae. Pollution adds further physiological stress across their life cycle.