Monitoring of Water Quality Using Aquatic Insects as Biological Indicators in Bhosga Reservoir, Karnataka, India

Abstract

Aquatic insects are the utmost generally employed macroinvertebrates in freshwater monitoring and assessment worldwide. However, aquatic insects have received far less attention for the objectives of health and water quality bioassessment, particularly in Kalaburagi, Karnataka. This study examined the abundance of aquatic insects in the Bhosga reservoir and their relationship to physicochemical factors. Water ecosystem health had been assessed using the BMWP, ASPT, and FBI scoring systems from October 2020 to September 2021. Samples were collected monthly by using the sweep net and dip net methods. There were 5964 aquatic insects recorded and divided into 23 families and 6 orders. Hemiptera (53%) was the most dominated aquatic insect family, followed by Coleoptera (16%), Diptera (15%), Odonata (8%), Ephemeroptera (6%), and Trichoptera (2%). Water quality falls under the class 2 category attributing "Good" water quality based on biotic indices. According to the PTI index, moderately sensitive to pollution group was abundant (74.11%) followed by sensitive to pollution (16.88%), and insensitive to pollution represented (9.00%) of the total abundance of aquatic insects. The compile of indices results indicated that the presence of moderately pollution sensitive families was higher than the insensitive to pollution families indicating that the aquatic habitat has not been significantly altered, nor is it very clean. The current study lays the groundwork for appropriate water management by using aquatic insects as bioindicators for assessing the water quality of the Bhosga reservoir.

A Study on the Biodiversity of Aquatic Invertebrate Fauna of Nizamsagr Irrigation Reservoir, Kamareddy District, Telangana, India

“…[12] Studied aquatic macro invertebrate fauna in Nigeria and [13] studied aquatic Entomofauna in Karimnagar district of Telangana state. Shwetha [14] Found that aquatic insects were the most commonly studied macro invertebrates in freshwater monitoring and assessment, with Hemiptera being the most dominant family. Kulkarni et al [15] Documented the abundance and diversity of aquatic insects in the Ramala reservoir in Maharashtra, observing 16 species belonging to 14 families and 4 orders.…”