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Ecology, life history and reproduction

Effects of land use on stonefly bioassessment metrics

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Pages 377-389 | Received 07 Oct 2008, Accepted 29 May 2009, Published online: 24 Nov 2009
 

Abstract

Stonefly samples were collected from disturbed and undisturbed streams of the Upper Orava river basin (the West Carpathians). Taxonomic richness was associated mainly with environment-scale factors such as water temperature, stream width and channel slope. Patterns in composition of stonefly assemblages detected by non-metric multidimensional scaling show that alterations in the catchment area caused by agriculture or forestry affect a number of stonefly metrics. Stonefly taxa richness and other biotic indices reflecting good water quality were negatively influenced by the extent of urban land cover and positively by forest land cover.

Acknowledgements

This study was a part of the Grant Projects Nos 1/4355/07 and 1/4353/07 funded by the Slovak Grant Agency of the Ministry of Education and Sciences. We express our thanks to Mgr. Z. Pilková for assistance in fieldwork and collection of material. We thank Dr Z. Šustek for help with translating our text. We thank Prof. P.H. Adler, Clemson University, USA, for correcting the English version of the manuscript.

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