A study on seasonal variations of benthic community and biodiversity indices in relation to environmental variables in disturbed ponds

The present work aims to analyze the spatio-temporal variability in benthic macro-invertebrate assemblages and biotic indices in a disturbed pond. Samples were collected seasonally over 1 year-cycles (2009–2010) at three sampling sites along the Western region U.P. Along the pond, spatial variation of the macroinvertebrate community composition was well assessed by similarity analysis and canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) synthesized and jointly ordered macroinvertebrate relation with different physicochemical gradient which clearly detected effect of environmental variables on benthic community. These variation gradients throughout the macroinvertebrate families occurrence data were subsequently confirmed separately by several correspondence analyses and revealed additional information, as the representative families for each sampling site group and season could be identified. Furthermore, these spatio-temporal gradients were discussed and put in relation with changes in the aquatic habitat (water temperature, conductivity, total dissolved solids, transparency, dissolved oxygen, Organic matter, composition of sediment, organic carbon etc).