bioindicators Flashcards
what is an indicator species?
a species or group of species that readily reflects the abiotic or biotic state of an environment, represents the impact on environment change on a habitat, community or ecosystem.
how many invertebrate indicator species are there?
4400 species
what are the different environmental factors which each species have different sensitivities to?
organic pollution, sedimentation, heavy metals, flow, physiochemical, habitat.
what is biological metrics?
a method to measure the health of the ecosystem.
what does BMWP stand for?
Biological monitoring working party
what does WHPT stand for?
Whalley, Hawkes, Paisley and Trigg
what does WFD stand for?
Water framework directive
what does CCI stand for?
Community conservation index
what does PSI stand for?
Proportion of sediment sensitive invertebrates
what does LIFE stand for?
Lotic Index invertebrate Flow Evaluation
what does RICT stand for?
River Invertebrate Classificaion Tool
what does BMWP assign to?
assign to each family of freshwater taxa relative to their tolerance of organic pollutants.
which pollution tolerant families score low in BMWP?
snails, leeches, largae, aquatic worms
which pollution sensitive families score high in BMWP?
mayfly, stonefly, caddis
what is a bad and good score for BMWP?
larger than 50 is good. below 50 is very bad. scores range from 0-300.
what are the key limitations for BMWP?
the score only accounts for presence or absence of a family, it can easily be affected by a change in sampling effect. it also doesnt take in account the effects of toher common pollutions.
which scoring system replaced BMWP in 2014?
WHPT
why did WHPT replace BMWP?
WHPT core is abundance weighted, and has been revisedd to reflect general pollution, rather than just organic pollution.
what does WHPT assign to?
general pollution
how is WHPT scored?
average score per taxon. WHPT score divided by the number of scoring taxa.
what is WHPT NTAXA?
number of scoring taxa, a measure of diversity.
what is WHPT ASPT?
the average score per taxon
what does CCI assign to?
based upon each species national rarity.
how does CCI score?
conservation score based on national rarity. multiply a mean of these scores by a community score derived from either the rarest taxon present or the BMWP score given.
what does PSI measure?
assesses the impact of fine sediment accumulation on macro-invertebrate communities.
how does PSI score?
species are assigned a score based on their sensitivity to sediment. calculation of the PSI score takens into account abundances of each.
what does LIFE measure?
the predominant flow types and changes in preceding flows.