Aquatic insect in the context of "Bluegill"

Aquatic plants, also referred to as hydrophytes, are vascular plants and non-vascular plants that have adapted to live in aquatic environments (saltwater or freshwater). In lakes, rivers and wetlands, aquatic vegetations provide cover for aquatic animals such as fish, amphibians and aquatic insects, create substrate for benthic invertebrates, produce oxygen via photosynthesis, and serve as food for some herbivorous wildlife. Familiar examples of aquatic plants include waterlily, lotus, duckweeds, mosquito fern, floating heart, water milfoils, mare's tail, water lettuce, water hyacinth, and algae.

Aquatic plants require special adaptations for prolonged inundation in water, and for floating at the water surface. The most common adaptation is the presence of lightweight internal packing cells, aerenchyma, but floating leaves and finely dissected leaves are also common. Aquatic plants only thrive in water or in soil that is frequently saturated, and are therefore a common component of swamps and marshlands.

Mayflies (also known as shadflies or fishflies in Canada and the upper Midwestern United States, as Canadian soldiers in the American Great Lakes region, and as up-winged flies in the United Kingdom) are aquatic insects belonging to the order Ephemeroptera. This order is part of an ancient group of insects termed the Palaeoptera, which also contains dragonflies and damselflies. Over 3,000 species of mayfly are known worldwide, grouped into over 400 genera in 42 families.

Mayflies have ancestral traits that were probably present in the first flying insects, such as long tails and wings that do not fold flat over the abdomen. Their immature stages are aquatic fresh water forms (called "naiads" or "nymphs"), whose presence indicates a clean, unpolluted and highly oxygenated aquatic environment. They are unique among insect orders in having a fully winged terrestrial preadult stage, the subimago, which moults into a sexually mature adult, the imago.

Spawn is the eggs and sperm released or deposited into water by aquatic animals. As a verb, to spawn refers to the process of freely releasing eggs and sperm into a body of water (fresh or marine); the physical act is known as spawning. The vast majority of aquatic and amphibious animals reproduce through spawning. These include the following groups:

• Bony fishes
• Crustaceans (such as crabs, shrimps, etc.)
• Mollusks (such as oysters, octopus, squid)
• Echinoderms (such as sea urchins, sea stars, sea cucumbers, etc.)
• Amphibians (such as frogs, toads, salamanders, newts)
• Aquatic insects (such as dragonflies, mayflies, mosquitoes)
• Coral, which are living colonies of tiny, aquatic organisms—not plants, as they are sometimes perceived to be. Corals, while appearing sedentary or botanical by nature, actually spawn by releasing clouds of sperm and egg cells into the water column, where the two mix.

As a general rule, aquatic or semiaquatic reptiles, birds, and mammals do not reproduce through spawning, but rather through copulation like their terrestrial counterparts. This is also true of cartilaginous fishes (such as sharks, rays and skates).

An artificial fly or fly lure is a type of fishing lure, usually used in the sport of fly fishing (although they may also be used in other forms of angling). In general, artificial flies are an imitation of aquatic insects that are natural food of the target fish species the fly fishers try to catch. Artificial flies are constructed by fly tying, in which furs, feathers, thread or any of very many other materials are tied onto a fish hook.

Artificial flies may be constructed to represent all manner of potential preys to freshwater and saltwater fish, including aquatic and terrestrial insects, crustaceans, worms, spawn, small baitfish, reptiles, amphibians, mammals and even birds. Effective artificial fly patterns are said to be killing flies because of their ability to put fish in the creel for the fly fisher. There are thousands of artificial fly patterns, many of them with descriptive and often idiosyncratic names.

Badwater Basin is an endorheic basin in Death Valley National Park, Death Valley, Inyo County, California, noted as the lowest point in North America and the United States, with a depth of 282 ft (86 m) below sea level. Mount Whitney, the highest point in the contiguous United States, is only 84.6 miles (136 km) to the northwest.

The site itself consists of a small spring-fed pool of "bad water" next to the road in a sink; the accumulated salts of the surrounding basin make it undrinkable, thus giving it the name. The pool does have animal and plant life, including pickleweed, aquatic insects, and the Badwater snail.

Waders or shorebirds are birds of the order Charadriiformes commonly found wading along shorelines and mudflats in order to forage for food crawling or burrowing in the mud and sand, usually small arthropods such as aquatic insects or crustaceans. The term "wader" is used in Europe, while "shorebird" is used in North America, where "wader" may be used instead to refer to long-legged wading birds such as storks and herons.

There are about 255 species of wader, most of which live in wetland or coastal environments. Many species of Arctic and temperate regions are strongly migratory, but tropical birds are often resident, or move only in response to rainfall patterns. Some of the Arctic species, such as the sanderling and grey plover, are amongst the longest distance migrants, spending the non-breeding season in the Southern Hemisphere; the bar-tailed godwit holds the global record for the longest non-stop flight of any bird, some flying over 13,000 km from Alaska to New Zealand.