Aquatic hyphomycetes communities occur as potential bioindicators of water quality

Abstract

With a profound knowledge of how physico-chemical parameters affect these communities, microbial communities could be used as indicators for environmental changes and for risk assessment studies. We studied aquatic hyphomycete communities in ponds from sites shaped by intense human activities (namely the “Mansfeld region”) and Urmil river, there are no sources of man made effluents in Chhatarpur district. Environmental stress factors such as high concentrations of chloride and calcium as well as low concentrations of oxygen significantly reduced the diversity and biomass of hyphomycetes in the investigated samples. Fungi were negatively correlated with nutrient concentrations. We propose that aquatic hyphomycete communities can be used as sensitive and integrative indicators for freshwater quality.