Distribuição de larvas de Chironominae (Insecta: Diptera: Chironomidae) em cursos d’água de baixa ordem sob influência de diferentes usos do solo no Município de Cabo Verde, MG

Abstract

In Brazil, the use of the Chironomidae family as response variable upon the influence of the different land uses is well known, however, studies using the subfamilies are still scarce, mainly to the Minas Gerais state. The objective of this study was to compare the taxonomic composition and distribution of genres of the Chironominae subfamily in watercourses of low order under the influence of different land uses in the Cabo Verde district, Minas Gerais. The samples were collected in eight streams with different adjacent land uses (pasture, monoculture of coffee and sugarcane, reforested areas and areas with presence of Atlantic Rain Forest preserved in the rainy (January/2014) and dry (July-August/2014) periods. The organisms were collected through scanning method, using a D type net, seeking to sample all possible biotopes in a stretch of 50 meters in a time of three minutes. The characterization of the streams studied was performed by applying of a rapid assessment protocol, size classification and sediment organic compounds and some limnological variables such as temperature, pH, electrical conductivity and dissolved oxygen. In this study was performed a principal component analysis (PCA) to relate the abiotic variables to the sampling sites, the multidimensional scaling analysis (MDS) to determine the similarity in fauna composition to points with different land uses and redundancy analysis (RDA) was used to relate environmental variables that most influenced the Chironominae assemblies. A total of 3790 larvae of Chironominae were collected, and the Polypedilum, Endotribelos, Phaenopsectra, Tanytarsus and Chironomus genres were the most abundant, respectively. This study showed significant differences in diversity between the two sampling periods only for environments considered natural. The environments with natural vegetation had greater wealth and abundance, while in surrounding environment consisting of monocultures of sugar cane was registered with lowest wealth, represented only by Chironomus. With that, we come to the conclusion that different land uses influenced the composition and distribution of Chironominae assemblies.