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Measuring the responses of macroinvertebrate communities to water pollution: a comparison of multivariate approaches, biotic and diversity indices

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Abstract

The responses of macroinvertebrate communities to pollution by sewage effluent in the River Trent system (UK) were investigated using a variety of multivariate approaches, biotic indices and diversity indices. It was found that multivariate analyses clearly illuminated the change of community structure along the pollution gradient. CY Dissimilarity Measure (CYD)-based Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) appeared to perform better than DCA and clustering. Species richness, the BMWP, BMWP-ASPT, the Chandler Score, Chandler-ASPT could detect the effects of major pollution. However, these indices showed varying sensitivity to different ranges of pollution, for example, Chandler-ASPT and BMWP-ASPT are more sensitive to the change in clean/slightly polluted range than in the moderate/very polluted range. The diversity indices were the least informative. The advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches were discussed.

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  1. Yong Cao

    Present address: Division of Life Sciences, University of Toronto at Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, M1C 1A4, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada

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  1. Division of Life Sciences, King's College London, Campden Hill Road, W8 7AH, London, UK

    Yong Cao, Anthony W. Bark & W. Peter Williams

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Cao, Y., Bark, A.W. & Williams, W.P. Measuring the responses of macroinvertebrate communities to water pollution: a comparison of multivariate approaches, biotic and diversity indices. Hydrobiologia 341, 1–19 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00012298

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