Assessing the ecological status of Mediterranean coastal lagoons using macroinvertebrates. Comparison of the most commonly used methods

Abstract

Benthic communities were studied twice (during the autumn and spring) in three Mediterranean coastal lagoons located in Greece (Logarou) and Italy (Cesine and Grado-Marano). The species composition and distribution, community diversity, species richness, dominant taxa and their ecological identity, benthic trophic and biomass size structure were investigated in these lagoons and the results were correlated with the environmental variables. The overall similarity based on species composition and abundance among the lagoons was low due to the differences in the dominant environmental factors, whereas the variations in the community diversity and species richness were mainly related to the degree of marine influence, reflecting the natural structure. The benthic classification indices AMBI, M-AMBI, BENTIX, BO2A, ISD and ISS were applied to assess the ecological status of the lagoons studied. The results revealed that the biotic indices AMBI, M-AMBI, BENTIX, and BO2A were not adequately efficient due to the natural dominance of the tolerant and opportunistic species and the correlation of the species diversity with natural stress. The ISD and ISS, on the other hand, based on size distribution frequencies and on size spectra sensitivity, respectively, showed good discrimination power among the impacted and unimpacted sites. The results indicate that except for species sensitivity, other traits of the communities such as the biomass or size structure could be more robust, sensitive and suitable for assessing the ecological quality of lagoons.

Macrozoobenthos as bioindicator of ecological status in Tanjung Pasir Coastal, Tangerang District, Banten Province, Indonesia

“…Identifying macrobenthos morphologically to the species level was conducted by using standard macrobenthos identification books (Fauchald 1977;Dharma 2005) and nomenclature writing following World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS: http://www.marinespecies.org/index.php). Organic carbon and sediment particle size (sand, mud, and clay) were analyzed using the "wet sieving" method (Reizopoulou et al 2014). Water temperature measurements using standard thermometer and brightness are measured with a Secchi disk.…”

“…The water sample was filtered using a Millipore strainer to analyze the nitrates, nitrites, soluble phosphates with the aid of the spectrophotometer. While water used to measure biological oxygen demand (BOD5) was inputted into dark glass bottles and analyzed by a modification of the Winkler method (Lizarralde and Pittaluga 2010;Reizopoulou et al 2014).…”

“…Determining waters condition with a biological method is better than use physical-chemical methods because physicchemical methods only describe waters condition in shortterm (Junshum et al 2008). The biological method could describe waters condition in long-term because this method will analyze biota response in pressure water (Carretero and There are many researchers who study about estuarine or sea with macrozoobenthos as bioindicator with (richness, diversity, similarity, and domination) index (Junshum et al 2018;Gandomy et al 2011;Reizopoulou et al 2014). One of the biological methods for water quality analysis is AZTI Marine Biotic Index (AMBI) which introduced by Bojan et al 2012.…”

Polychaete/amphipod ratios: An approach to validating simple benthic indicators

“…BOPA/BO2A was among the five most used indices in a review of 35 benthic quality assessment indices employed in different countries to assess the impact of 15 different human pressures (Borja et al, 2015). Moreover, in most of these studies, BOPA and BO2A were compared with other indices, mainly BENTIX, AMBI and M-AMBI (see also Boon et al, 2011;Culhane, 2012;Nebra et al, 2014;Reizopoulou et al, 2014). It appeared that, in most cases, the BOPA and BO2A indices tended to overestimate the Ecological Status of the stations (e.g.…”

“…It appeared that, in most cases, the BOPA and BO2A indices tended to overestimate the Ecological Status of the stations (e.g. Caglar and Albayrak, 2012;Reizopoulou et al, 2014;Aguado-Giménez et al, 2015), but the comparisons showed in most of the cited studies did not take into account the revised thresholds proposed by de-la-Ossa-Carretero and , including recent publications (Nebra et al, 2014;Aguado-Giménez et al, 2015). In addition, Keeley et al (2012) pointed out that the Ecological Status classification was underestimated by BOPA when the species richness and abundances of macro-invertebrates were very low, though the use of BOPA was not recommended for abundance <20 ind.…”