Do abundance and percentage of dipteran larvae and Oligochaeta indicate low water quality in streams and lake littoral?

Abstract

Abstract The presence of chironomids and/or oligochaetes is generally considered to be an indication of poor status of freshwater. Non-chironomid dipterans show unclear trends. The abundance and percentage of these groups are rarely used as potential indicators. We attempted to determine whether these metrics reveal freshwater quality in lowland streams and lake littoral (Northern Europe, Baltic ecoregion, Estonia). The water quality was assessed based either on the water itself or on macroinvertebrates, fish, macrophytes, phytobenthos (in streams only) and/or phytoplankton (in lakes only). As expected, the high abundance and high percentage of chironomids and ceratopogonids indicated low quality of water in lakes. The high percentage of chironomids indicated low water quality also in streams. The high percentage of oligochaetes indicated low water quality in lakes. However, their high abundance (but not the percentage) was unexpectedly a symptom of high water quality in streams and to a lesser extent in lakes. In these cases, oligochaetes were represented by rheophilic, rather than saprophilic species. The abundance of simuliids (but not the percentage) and the richness of dipteran families indicated high water quality in streams. We suggest that the obtained results will allow better use of the indicative potential of freshwater macroinvertebrates.