THE BENTHIC MACROINVERTEBRATE COMMUNITY RELATING TO THE WATER QUALITY IN LOWER ZHUJIANG (PEARL RIVER)
珠江三角洲底栖动物群落与水质关系

The community structure of benthic macroinvertebrates in the delta area of lower Zhujiang (Pearl River) was constituted mainly by Oligochaeta, Po-lychaeta and Corbicula fiuminea (Mollusca). Among them Oligochaeta was apparently the dominant organism as it was found throughout the river system, while Polychaeta and Corbicula fiuminea were absent in the reaches around urban areas. The biological pollution index (BPI) was served as an approach to synthesize the biological parameters and evaluate the water quality. In order to test the confidence of BPI, multi-regression technique was used to reveal the relationship between BPI and water parameters; similarity coefficient of cluster analysis was applied to the same parameters from which several groups were classified, All results showed that BPI is essentially as effective as chemical approaches to the water quality assessment.