Distribution and diversity of aquatic insects in different water bodies of Qatar

Abstract

Aquatic insect fauna remains an important tool for bio indication of environmental disturbance, while maintaining a healthy aquatic system. The purpose of the study was to document and to identify the diversity and distribution patterns of aquatic insect, a highly ignored aspect from the Qatar. Following the standard procedures, the samples were collected from aquatic habitats during the period October 2015 to May 2017 on monthly basis. A total of 11,287 individuals, belonging to 6 orders were captured. Dipterans were the abundant with the percentages of 71.01 (n=8,015), while the lowest percentage was observed for Coleoptera 0.04 (n=05). Twelve insects families were identified, among these five were reported under Diptera, followed by Hemiptera (03), while Coleoptera, Tricoptera, Odonata, and Ephemeroptera were represented by single families. Among the selected localities, Dipterans were collected from 10 stations, followed by Hemiptera (9), Coleoptera (4), Odonota (4), Ephemeroptera (3) and Trichoptera (1) respectively. Among the water bodies samples, streams were the most preferred habitats (n=2,767), while drinking water pools were the least (27). Moreover, the highest Simpson diversity index of 1.48 and lowest of 0.47 was recorded for flooded sewage pool and plastic containers respectively, while the low evenness values were observed for ponds, and less than 1 Margalef’s diversity values were seen for all habitats. This study documents the patterns of the diversity and distribution of aquatic insects, and provides a baseline for the future studies from Qatar.

Ecological analysis of higher aquatic and semi-aquatic plants of Lake Alakol

“…A value close to 1 indicates high dominance of some species. Shannon's diversity index = 3.48, indicating that Lake Alakol has a significant level of species diversity of macrophytes (Formulas 1-3), [6].…”

“…Geobotanical description of vegetation was carried out in 15 localities of Lake Alakol's small area (Figure 1) (on sample plots of standard size laid in 3-fold repetition, 1 m x 1 m in size), along with the consecutive herbarization of selected plants and their inclusion in geobotanical forms. To assess the species richness of the identified flora, the diversity indices of Margalef, Menkhinik and Shannon were used [6].…”

“…The higher the index value, the greater the species richness the community is characterized by. To calculate the indices, the absolute value is used, and it makes the analysis extremely sensitive to the sample size [ 6].…”