Patterns of distribution of macroinvertebrate families in rivers of north‐western Australia

Abstract

Summary 1. The northern half of Western Australia is a large, sparsely populated area with a climate that ranges from monsoonal in the Kimberley to arid in the Gascoyne and Pilbara regions. The aquatic invertebrate fauna is poorly known. 2. Fifty‐one sites located on 14 river systems were sampled three times between August 1994 and October 1995. A total of 90 taxa, most identified to family level, were collected. The fauna was dominated by insects, which constituted 74% of the total number of taxa collected. 3. Major habitats at each site were sampled separately and sites with more habitats tended to have a richer fauna. All habitats showed significant differences in taxonomic richness between regions. Family richness decreased with increasing latitude, being highest in the Kimberley region and lowest in the Gascoyne. 4. Despite the differences in taxon richness between regions, community composition of the aquatic invertebrate fauna at the family level did not differ greatly. Four major groups of sites were identified by cluster analysis, based on the invertebrate families present at each site, but differences between groups were small. 5. Significant temporal variation in taxon richness was found in channel habitat but not the three other habitats sampled (riffle, macrophyte, pool‐rocks). Community composition in channel habitat varied temporally among groups of sites identified by cluster analysis but the pattern was not consistent.

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“…In contrast, the community structure of Groups 1 and 2 were similar during both the winter and spring sampling periods (Table 4.3). The BIO-ENV analyses between environmental variables and invertebrate abundance data indicated that pH was the single variable most closely correlated with the invertebrate distribution patterns for each season (Table 4. The majority of taxa collected over the three seasons belonged to the class Insecta, supporting similar findings by previous Western Australian studies Pusey and Edward 1990;Kay et al 1999). Coleoptera and Diptera were the most diverse orders within the class, although the proportions changed according to season.…”

Biodiversity of the wetlands of the Kakadu Region, northern Australia

“…Despite this, the Australian chironomid fauna is impoverished compared with northern hemispheric faunas (Cranston, 2000). Kay et al (1999) remarked upon the similarity of macro-invertebrate families in fresh waters of northwestern Australia, compared with elsewhere across northern Australia. Cranston (2000) noted little additional richness and only modest novelty of chironomid species in waters of north-western Australia compared to the Kakadu Region, a pattern that appears to hold generally for most other invertebrate faunal groups (C. Humphrey, unpublished observations).…”

Temporal variations in macroinvertebrate communities from the tributaries in the Three Gorges Reservoir Catchment, China

“…Accordingly, the seasonal effects on macroinvertebrate community composition are important, should not be neglected and should be taken into account for biomonitoring purposes [13,14]. In tropical, temperate and subarctic river or stream systems, seasonal variations in macroinvertebrate assemblages have been observed and well documented [8,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. However, most of these investigations were confined to streams or rivers in temperate and tropical areas, and subtropical rivers on the regional scale have received much less attention [31,32].…”