Tuesday, June 5, 2007 - 11:45 AM
154

Application of computational methods and the power law to analysis of species abundance patterns in benthic macorinvetebrate communities collected in disturbed stream ecosystems

Xiaodong Qu1, Mi Yong Song2, Young Seuk Park3, Hyun Ju Hwang1, Young Cheol Park4, Kyung Hee Oh5, and Tae-Soo Chon1. (1) Lab. of Ecology and Behavior System, Div. of Biological Sciences, Pusan National University, Pusan, 609-735, South Korea, (2) West Sea Fisheries Research institute, Incheon, 400-420, South Korea, (3) Department of Biology, Kyung Hee University,, Seoul, 130-701, South Korea, (4) Project Management Unit, UNDP/GEF Korea Wetlands Project, National Institute of Environmental Research, Incheon, 404-170, South Korea, (5) Biological Resources Division, National Institute of Environmental Research, Incheon, 404-170, South Korea

The benthic macroinvertebrates were collected from clean to intermediately polluted streams on the national scale in the Southern Peninsula of Korea. Overall patterns of macroinvertebrate communities were patterned by using Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) including the Self-Organizing Map. The patterned groups accordingly revealed the impact of pollution: the species abundance and richness accordingly reflected geographical conditions and anthropogenic disturbances, while some tolerant species were selectively collected in the disturbed areas. We further checked existence of power law on community parameters such as species richness and biodiversity indices in the sampled communities in different conditions of pollution. Computational properties residing in the patterned community data accordingly reflected the impact of disturbances, while the power law confirmed changes occurred in data structure corresponding to different clusters shown by the ANN models. The utilization of computational methods such as ANN and fractal dimension in combination would be useful for quantitatively characterizing changes in ecosystem quality caused by natural and anthropogenic disturbance in stream ecosystems.


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