The running waters macroinvertebrates community: sampling techniques

Abstract

The community of running water macroinvertebrates has proved to be one of key subjects for fluvial ecology and bioindication studies, thanks both to the different trophic roles within the range of taxa and to the ease with which they may be collected and identified. However, the complex nature of this community creates problems concerning the complete identification of the full range of taxa, even when restricting the taxonomic classification to families and genera. Even so, the need to use the community for the implementation of indexes of Ecological Status of freshwaters and for the detection of reference conditions, necessarily means a deeper knowledge of this structure. Hence, a standard methodology of the capture effort is required to identify not only the ecological quality but also a reference community for each selected fluvial typology and for each section examined. Starting from the processing of data collected during intercalibration exercises of the IBE method, the authors analyse the results underlining the share given by the size of the sample collected (catchment effort), and by the distribution models of different taxa within the community, in order to give a contribution to the evaluation of the reliability level of standard samples. The results confirm the models already described in previous publications and lead us to accept the presence of marginal degrees of uncertainty in standard samples.