The Dragonfly Nymph

A Different Kind of Development

In the heart of Bali, across 9,000 square meters of living forest, we are attempting something rare: a human settlement that measures its success not by what it extracts, but by what it amplifies. Thirteen villas, yes—but more importantly, countless billions of microorganisms, hundreds of plant species, and one particular creature that has become our teacher, our metric, and our promise to the land.

This is the story of the dragonfly, and why everything we build begins with a question: Will the nymph be happy here?

The Hidden Life

When you see a dragonfly hovering above water, iridescent wings catching the light, you are witnessing only the epilogue of a much longer story. That aerial dancer spent most of its life in a form you've likely never seen—submerged, segmented, utterly alien. The dragonfly nymph, or naiad, lives underwater for months or even years before its brief, brilliant flight.

This is the creature we have chosen as our covenant partner—not our only partner, but our primary indicator. We honor the butterflies that pollinate our flowering zones, the bats that emerge at dusk to continue the work of pest control through the night. Each has its role in the symphony of this place. But the dragonfly nymph is different: it is the one creature whose entire existence—unseen, underwater, for years—is a continuous testimony to the integrity of our most fundamental commitment: the purity and vitality of the interconnected 11 pools and 10 reed beds along other water features; our living water ecosystem.

When the dragonfly nymph thrives, we know we have succeeded. When it struggles, we know we have broken our promise—to the forest, to the water, to the invisible architecture of life that makes abundance possible.

Part I: The Nymph as Truth-Teller

The Litmus Test for Purity

The dragonfly nymph cannot lie. It cannot adapt to compromise. It is unforgiving in its demands: the water must be genuinely pure, or it will not survive.

This makes it the perfect auditor for our community's most fundamental commitment: working with nature, never against it. Following permaculture's first principle, we add only nature to nature—no external quick fixes, no chemical shortcuts. Nothig enters our water except plants and the fresh spring water that flows constantly from the cliff below, fed by the river. This pristine source does double duty: it tops up our living water ecosystem as it cycles and evaporates, and it nourishes the trees and plants throughout our forest. We are fortunate to have this constant, pure flow—a gift that makes our covenant with the dragonfly possible.

All ecosystems are sensitive, yet remarkably robust when nature itself maintains the balance. A single departure from this principle—any synthetic intervention, any industrial shortcut—and the nymph population signals the breach. Its presence is our living certification that we honor this commitment not occasionally, but absolutely.

In effect, we have outsourced our quality control to a species with standards far more rigorous than any human regulatory body. The nymph's survival is our license to operate.

The Breath of Moving Water

Dragonfly nymphs breathe through gills, extracting dissolved oxygen directly from the water. This makes them exquisitely sensitive to stagnation. Water that sits too long becomes hypoxic—depleted, lifeless, a breeding ground for exactly the pests we wish to avoid.

Our system flows at 7–8 cubic meters per hour, cycling the entire volume daily through reed beds, gravel filters, and cascading waterfalls. This constant circulation does two things simultaneously: it saturates the water with oxygen, creating the conditions the nymphs require, and it eliminates the still-water zones where mosquitoes lay their eggs.

The engineering serves the ecology; the ecology validates the engineering. The nymph's persistence is proof that our water breathes.

The Proof of Complexity

Perhaps most importantly, the nymph's presence signals that we have created not just clean water, but living water—a functioning ecosystem with depth and nuance.

The nymph is a specialized predator. It hunts by ambush, by patience, by precise timing. For it to thrive, there must be prey populations to regulate—zooplankton, micro-crustaceans, the larvae of other insects. These, in turn, require their own food sources: algae, detritus, bacterial films. The whole system must be in balance, each level supporting the next.

A sterile swimming pool can be chemically pure but ecologically dead. The dragonfly nymph tells us we have achieved something far more sophisticated: a self-regulating aquatic community where nutrients cycle, populations balance, and clarity emerges not from filtration chemicals but from biological intelligence.

Part II: The Nymph as Apex Regulator

Liberating the Predator from Pest Control

There is a common narrative around dragonflies: they eat mosquitoes, therefore they are useful. This is true but incomplete. It also undersells the nymph's more sophisticated role in our system.

Yes, dragonfly nymphs can and do consume mosquito larvae. But in a properly designed living water system with high flow rates, mosquito breeding is already controlled by physics. Culex and Aedes mosquitoes require still water for oviposition and larval development. Our constant circulation denies them this. The mosquito problem is solved before the nymph ever enters the equation.

This engineering decision liberates the nymph to do something far more valuable: regulate the invisible populations that determine water clarity and ecosystem health.

The Work Unseen

In a fish-free system—and ours is deliberately fish-free—the dragonfly nymph assumes the role of apex micro-predator. It occupies the top of the aquatic food chain, and its prey are the tiny, rapidly reproducing organisms that most people never see but which determine whether water is crystalline or cloudy, balanced or blooming with algae.

Zooplankton and Micro-Crustaceans: Water fleas, copepods, and similar creatures perform essential work—they graze on algae and detritus. But left unchecked, their populations explode, consuming beneficial bacteria and shifting nutrient loads in ways that cloud the water and destabilize the system. The nymphs cull these populations with surgical precision, maintaining them at levels that support clarity without allowing overgrowth.

Shrimp and Bottom-Dwellers: Native freshwater shrimp arrived on their own—we never introduced them, yet there they are: wild, almost transparent, nature's cleanup crew working the bottom substrates. Perhaps they came with the spring water, or migrated from the river below. Their presence is itself a sign that we've created habitat worth colonizing. But shrimp reproduce quickly, and when populations surge beyond what the nymphs can naturally regulate, we step in as nature's helpers—using simple shrimp traps to harvest the excess. Our communal village staff find good use for them, and the ecosystem remains in balance. This is permaculture at work: observation, gentle intervention when needed, and ensuring nothing goes to waste.

Amphibian Offspring: Frogs and toads are welcome residents, their songs a nightly symphony. But a single clutch can contain thousands of eggs. The nymphs regulate these populations, preventing any one species from overwhelming the habitat and ensuring that tadpole communities develop at a sustainable pace.

This is ecological finesse. The nymph doesn't eliminate these populations—it modulates them. It keeps the system in dynamic equilibrium, where every organism has a role and no single species dominates.

The Architecture of Clarity

The result of this constant, invisible predation is something you can see most of the time: water clarity.

But let's be honest—clarity is sometimes just vanity. With 11 interconnected pools and 10 reed beds across 9,000 square meters of living forest, temporary cloudiness is inevitable and natural. A heavy rain may bring runoff from the cliff with our spring water. A gardener tending to reed beds stirs up sediment settled on the gravel. A monitor lizard slides through, or a porcupine takes an evening bath, disturbing a reed bed's carefully layered substrates. This is not failure—this is life.

What matters is not perfection, but resilience and response. When cloudiness persists, we investigate: Is one pool getting too much sun, allowing string algae to proliferate? Has an unwanted fish found its way in, causing an algae bloom with its waste? Does a biofilter need backwashing? These are manageable interventions, guided by observation.

Most of the time, our water is clear—not because we demand it, but because the system maintains itself. That clarity is the visible signature of balance: nutrient processing cycling cleanly, micro-populations regulated by the nymphs, beneficial bacteria thriving in the reed beds.

The dragonfly nymph is not in the water. It is the intelligence of the water.

Part III: Why No Fish?

This deserves its own explanation, because the decision to exclude fish is counterintuitive and central to our philosophy.

Fish are often introduced to ponds for algae control or aesthetic reasons. But in a hydrobotanical system designed around native ecology, fish present more problems than they solve:

They compete with our chosen apex predator. Fish are voracious predators of dragonfly nymphs. In a fish pond, nymph populations collapse. We would lose our primary biological regulator and the living indicator that tells us our water is healthy.

They disrupt nutrient cycling. Fish produce significant waste, requiring additional filtration and often leading to algae blooms. They extract nutrients from the system in ways that benefit neither the plants nor the invertebrate communities we cultivate.

They are ecologically redundant. In a flowing system with reed beds, beneficial bacteria, and a healthy nymph population, fish offer no critical function. They are guests, not workers—and expensive ones, requiring constant management.

By choosing fish-free design, we protect the nymph, simplify our system, and honor the logic of the ecosystem we are regenerating. The forest did not evolve with goldfish. It evolved with dragonflies.

Part IV: The Promise of Emergence

After months or years underwater—hunting, growing, molting through instars—the nymph receives its call. It crawls up a reed stem or onto a stone, its body guided by instinct and the angle of light. It clings there, vulnerable, and begins its final transformation.

The exoskeleton splits. Slowly, impossibly, the adult dragonfly pulls itself free—wings crumpled, body soft, colors not yet brilliant. It rests, pumps fluid into its wings, hardens in the air. Then it flies.

This emergence is not merely biological—it is symbolic. It is the moment the invisible work of the ecosystem becomes visible. The adult dragonfly, in its brief aerial life, is the proof of everything that happened underwater. It is the forest's way of saying: This place is whole.

And the adult continues the work. A single dragonfly can consume 100–400 flying insects per day—mosquitoes, midges, flies. It patrols the air above our community, an elegant, tireless protector. But it does not work alone.

At dusk, as the dragonflies begin their final feeding runs, another shift begins. The bats emerge—small, precise shadows that swoop and wheel in patterns that seem choreographed with the insects they pursue. You will see them diving low, zooming near the water where insects concentrate in the cooling air, their echolocation so refined they can pluck mosquitoes and midges from flight with surgical precision. Dragonflies hunt by sight in the fading light; bats hunt by sound in the gathering darkness. Together, they create a continuous aerial defense, a living net that operates across the full spectrum of day and night.

(Note: We will never be entirely mosquito-free—no living ecosystem can make that promise. Some individuals are simply more attractive to mosquitoes than others. See the article on living with mosquitoes in a regenerative community.)

This is what permaculture calls "stacking functions"—multiple species, multiple strategies, all contributing to the same outcome: balance, health, protection. The forest evolved this way. We are simply learning to stop interfering with its intelligence.

When we see dozens of dragonflies at each reed bed throughout the day, when we watch them hunt in the dappled light between the trees, we know:

• Our water is pure.

• Our ecosystem is balanced.

• Our community is protected by natural processes.

• Our covenant with the forest is being honored.

A Final Thought

The dragonfly nymph is our teacher, our metric, our covenant with this land. When it thrives, we know we have kept our promises—to the water, to the forest, to the invisible architecture of life that makes abundance possible.

When you swim in these living waters, remember: add nothing but the joy you carry with you. The system will take care of the rest.

The engineering, design, and ongoing improvements of this system come from volunteer villa residents in the Living Water Workgroup. Our local staff team maintains the daily operations, learning alongside the workgroup as the system evolves. If you're interested in volunteering with us, reach out.

Welcome to the work.