Water Biodiversity Monitoring

Aquatic ecosystems (inland and marine) include vascular plants and algae as well as animals and have a rich biodiversity. The quality of the water environment is very closely related to the diversity of aquatic organisms. The complex community structure of aquatic organisms can indicate the quality and homogeneity of the water environment, and one of the important criteria for water environment evaluation is the diversity index of aquatic organisms.

Lifeasible can detect and analyze the diversity indices of aquatic organisms in water samples, which can show the changes of distribution density and diversity indices of aquatic organisms in water samples, and characterize the condition of the water environment by the results.

The functional integrity of aquatic organisms is characterized by aquatic algae, and the aquatic pollution index is analyzed by the biodiversity index, which is related to the number of algae and the total number of algae.

Biodiversity assessment

Biodiversity indices can measure the complexity of community structure and function, but using one diversity index alone to explain the diversity of aquatic organisms is prone to large biases. Therefore, Lifeasible uses different biodiversity indices or a combination of biodiversity indices for different samples for diversity assessment. Commonly used indicators are the Berger-Parker dominance index, Margalef richness index, Menhinick diversity index, Pielou evenness index, Shannon-Wiener diversity index, Simpson diversity index, Fisher α index, Q index.

General steps of biodiversity analysis

• Obtain the species matrix based on the analysis of the samples provided by the client, at which point the size of the subsamples is checked for representativeness
• Derive species richness and calculate Margalef indices for preliminary assessment of community diversity
• Draw a rank abundance map to check the distribution type
• If one of the log-rank, log-normal rank distribution, and broken-stick rank distribution is met, Fisher α index or Q index is calculated
• Consider the contribution of each species to the diversity and calculate the Shannon index
• Use the Pielou evenness index to measure the evenness of species distribution in the community
• If there are replicates of subsamples, we will also consider statistical tests of diversity indices

Biodiversity is an important parameter that reflects the structural characteristics of biological communities and is also an important measure of the stability of community structure; usually, the higher the diversity, the richer the species composition of the community and the more stable the structure; conversely, the more homogeneous the species composition, the less stable the community structure. Lifeasible has prepared a variety of diversity indicators for assessing and analyzing water samples for this purpose, and these results help our clients analyze water quality and pollution. Please contact our staff so that you can get the right biodiversity analysis solution for your project the first time.