Y. Cao et al., MEASURING THE RESPONSES OF MACROINVERTEBRATE COMMUNITIES TO WATER-POLLUTION - A COMPARISON OF MULTIVARIATE APPROACHES, BIOTIC AND DIVERSITYINDEXES, Hydrobiologia, 341(1), 1996, pp. 1-19
The responses of macroinvertebrate communities to pollution by sewage
effluent in the River Trent system (UK) were investigated using a vari
ety 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) appear
ed to perform better than DCA and clustering. Species richness, the BM
WP, BMWP-ASPT, the Chandler Score, Chandler-ASPT could detect the effe
cts of major pollution. However, these indices showed varying sensitiv
ity to different ranges of pollution, for example, Chandler-ASPT and B
MWP-ASPT are more sensitive to the change in clean/slightly polluted r
ange than in the moderate/very polluted range. The diversity indices w
ere the least informative. The advantages and disadvantages of the var
ious approaches were discussed.