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An appraisal of a biocontamination assessment method for freshwater macroinvertebrate assemblages; a practical way to measure a significant biological pressure?

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Abstract

Freshwater invasive or alien species (IAS) can have a major impact on benthic macroinvertebrate assemblage structure and diversity. This has implications for accurate biological monitoring, the assessment of the ecological quality status of rivers and achievement of Water Framework Directive (WFD) objectives. Although IAS constitutes a major biological pressure to WFD objectives, current approaches to ecological status assessment tend to ignore their presence. This problem is compounded as biotic indices such as the Biological Monitoring Working Party (BMWP) score do not distinguish between native and IAS, when IAS tend to be more tolerant of organic pollution than the natives they replace. Biocontamination is the presence of an IAS in a system, and we tested a new method of biocontamination assessment, designed to be used alongside current routine water quality monitoring techniques, by applying it to biological monitoring data from the river monitoring programme of a small Island, The Isle of Man. Although 54% of monitoring sites exhibited no biocontamination, 19% showed low or moderate biocontamination and 27% high or severe biocontamination. Richness contamination was low (only two contaminated families being recorded), but abundance contamination was high in some sites (87% of individuals being IAS). Sites with a greater relative abundance of IAS individuals exhibited lower BMWP water quality. Within invaded sites BMWP monitoring was not responsive to changing chemical water quality, whereas within uninvaded sites it was. In invaded sites, the relative abundance of IAS increased as ammonia and BOD5 increased. Our study shows current monitoring approaches mask the presence of AIS within assemblages, with some highly biocontaminated sites registering high BMWP biological quality. This new index represents a simple way to integrate the IAS biological pressure into established WFD monitoring programmes, to produce more comprehensive estimates of ecological quality status than are currently being realised.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank James Singleton, Neil Longwith and Elizabeth Green for processing chemical samples. They also thank Peeter Nõges and two anonymous referees whose comments greatly improved this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Government Laboratory, Ballakermeen Road, Douglas, Isle of Man, IM1 4BR, British Isles

    Calum MacNeil

  2. School of Biological Sciences, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK

    Mark Briffa

  3. Department of Environmental Science, Institute for Water and Wetland Research, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Rob S. E. W. Leuven

  4. Wildlife and Conservation Division, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Knockaloe Farm, Peel, Isle of Man, IM5 3AJ, British Isles

    Fiona R. Gell & Richard Selman

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  1. Calum MacNeil
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  2. Mark Briffa
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  5. Richard Selman
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Correspondence to Calum MacNeil.

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Handling editor: P. Nõges

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MacNeil, C., Briffa, M., Leuven, R.S.E.W. et al. An appraisal of a biocontamination assessment method for freshwater macroinvertebrate assemblages; a practical way to measure a significant biological pressure?. Hydrobiologia 638, 151–159 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-009-0037-x

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