Assessing the water quality by using biological indicators is a reliable and economically feasible way to promote environmental conservation in developing tropical countries. Here, we report one of the few examples of river biomonitoring in Honduras. In June 2005, benthic macroinvertebrates were collected from six sites in the Río Cangrejal basin. An adapted version of the Biological Monitoring Working Party index (BMWP) was used to assess the water quality because it is simple, consolidated, relatively easy to use, and needs a family-level identification. Moreover, two other community metrics were calculated, namely the total taxon richness and local contribution to beta diversity (LCBD). Differences in the biomonitoring and diversity metrics among sites and their correlations were statistically tested. Thirty-nine macroinvertebrate taxa were collected and, despite significant differences in the BMWP score, all sampling sites were classified in the high environmental quality class. A very strong and positive correlation between the BMPW and taxon richness was found, while LCBD did not vary significantly and did not correlate with the other metrics. Our results suggest that taxon richness could be used as a surrogate indicator to assess the water quality when consolidate biomonitoring methods are not available.

中文翻译：

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利用大型无脊椎动物群落监测新热带水流：来自洪都拉斯的证据

通过使用生物指标评估水质是在发展中热带国家中促进环境保护的可靠且经济可行的方式。在这里，我们报告了洪都拉斯河流生物监测的少数几个例子之一。2005年6月，从里奥坎格雷哈尔盆地的六个地点采集了底栖大型无脊椎动物。生物监测工作组指数（BMWP）的改编版用于评估水质，因为它简单，合并，相对易于使用并且需要家庭级别的鉴定。此外，还计算了其他两个社区指标，即总分类群丰富度和本地对β多样性的贡献（LCBD）。统计检验站点之间生物监测和多样性指标的差异及其相关性。收集了39个大型无脊椎动物类群，尽管BMWP得分存在显着差异，但所有采样地点均被归类为高环境质量等级。发现BMPW与分类单元丰富度之间存在非常强的正相关关系，而LCBD并没有显着变化，并且与其他指标也没有相关性。我们的研究结果表明，当没有统一的生物监测方法时，分类单元丰富度可以用作评估水质的替代指标。