Relative abundance of benthic Macro-invertebrates in relation to abiotic environment in Hussainabad nallah, Hunza, Gilgit Baltistan, Pakistan
Paper Details
Relative abundance of benthic Macro-invertebrates in relation to abiotic environment in Hussainabad nallah, Hunza, Gilgit Baltistan, Pakistan
Abstract
Benthic macro-invertebrates have been extensively used as bio-indicators of ecosystem structure. The presence of particular species, taxa or community in the ecosystem reflects the history of that environment as well as the condition of that area. The samples of macro-invertebrates were collected from Hussainabad nallah on 26th April 2014 with the help of D-frame kick net. Total of five stations were selected keeping in view the accessibility to stations. At each station 100 meter area was allocated which was further divided in to five sub stations. A total of 930 macro invertebrates were collected from Hussainabad nallah. Highest density of macro-invertebrates were recorded from Station 2 (45.16%) followed by station 4 (30.86%), station1 (10.75%), station 3 (10.53%) and station 5 (2.68%) respectively. Hussainabad nallah was dominated by ephemeroptera (57.82%), followed by diptera (27.96%), plecoptera (9.68%), tricoptera (3.01%) and coleoptera (0.54%). Highest percentage of ephemeroptera is an indication for fresh environment. The mean value of turbidity was (7.03NTU), pH (6.88), temperature (14oC) and conductivity (372µS/cm) at Hussainabad nallah. Our findings indicated that, the most abundant macro-invertebrate fauna in Hussainabad nallah was ephemeroptera; that may lead to the fact that this order flourish well in fresh environment.
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