Benthic Invertebrates Monitoring of the Muling River basin in Northeast China

Abstract Background: Muling River is the fifth-largest river in Heilongjiang Province, and it is also the main feeding river to the Ussuri River which is the boundary river of China and Russia in Heilongjiang Province northeast of China. Muling River basin located in the south of Sanjiang Plain. Macroinvertebrate samples were collected using a D-frame net and Shannon-Wiener index were calculated in terms of abundance. Results: A total of 158 genera or species macroinvertebrate were collected from the 28 sampling sites and classified into six functional feeding groups including 61 gatherers/collectors, 42 predators, 22 scrapers, 14 shredders, 11 filterers/collectors and 8 omnivores. The correlation and relationship between environmental variables and macroinvertebrate functional feeding groups was explored using Pearson analysis and redundancy analysis. The analysis results displayed that macroinvertebrate functional feeding groups had strong relationships with the environmental variables in the Muling River basin.Conclusions: All FFGs, total abundance and Shannon-Wiener index were not significantly different. Total abundance of macroinvertebrates was higher in summer and biodiversity index was higher in autumn. Environmental factors of natural gradients and nutrition indicator were not significantly different, while others were significantly different.