Study of ecological succession of benthic communities macoinvertebrados in the process of colonization of a small watercourse after a long droughtstudy of ecological succession of benthic communities macoinvertebrados in the process of colonization of a small watercourse after a long drought

Abstract

The benthic macroinvertebrate community consists of a group of organisms that have a wide variety of anatomical, physiological and ecological. This diversity allows them to colonize all types of aquatic ecosystems and makes them one of the most popular indicators of biological quality of water through the use of a large number of methodologies since the use of diversity indices and richness to methods based on the structure of the communities. One of the main factors that affect the structure of benthic macroinvertebrate communities are the changes on the flow patterns induced by climatic changes or by human action. The purpose of this work is to study the changes on the structure of benthic macroinvertebrate communities along the recolonization time after a period of total drought of a section of the Poço Negro creek, a small water course in the North of Portugal. This study compare results (metrics and functional structure) of samples collected conducted prior to the total dry of creek with samples taken after the first rainfall along.