Journal of Environmental Biology

Studies on macrobenthic organisms in relation to water

parameters at East Calcutta Wetlands

Arnab Basu, Shruti Sengupta,Sudipta Dutta, Atrayee Saha,Prantik Ghosh and Sheela Roy*

Department of Zoology, Vidyasagar College, Bidhannagar Campus, Kolkata -700 091, India

*Corresponding Author email : roysheela77@yahoo.co.in

  Publication Data

  Paper received:

  28 September 2011

 Revised received:

 24 May 2012

 Re-revised received:

 27 August 2012

 Accepted:

 20 October 2012

Abstract

East Calcutta Wetlands is an internationally important site for natural remediation of domestic sewage and organic waste and their successful recycling into habitat for pisciculture. Macrobenthic fauna is responsible for efficient utilization of sediments and their diversity indicates health of a wetland in accordance to its sediment quality. In the present study, several  physico-chemical parameters such as DO (3.03-11.06 ppm), CO2 (4.02-20.0 ppm), alkalinity (36.83-164.0 ppm), total hardness (100.0-270.00 ppm), TDS (450.0-620 ppm), chloride(142.0- 364.2 ppm), pH (7.3-8.5), water transparency (8.0-54.2 cm), organic contents like organic carbon (1.03-10.9mg g^-1)were studied. Variation in macrobenthic fauna from the selected fields were also examined by calculating Simpson's dominance index, evenness index (Pielou index), Shannon's diversity index. 12 taxa of mollusk and 1 taxa of annelid were found in the study and Bellamya and Thiara were the most dominant species which indicated clean water of the pond. The correlation between macrobenthic diversity and physico-chemical parameters were also studied in selected ponds from East Calcutta Wetlands.

Key words

Macrobenthos, Physico-chemical parameters, Diversity Indices, Pisciculture

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