Aquatic insect diversity and ubiquity of the Western Ghats, India

Abstract

We studied the distribution of 4533 individuals of aquatic insects belonging to 72 genera, 45 families and 10 orders, collected from headwater stream rift1es from 17 localities in the hills of southwestern India. The southern, wetter siteswith lower human impacts favour specialised sensitive taxa. The ecological attributes are correlated across the taxonomicgradient, viz. family, genus and species levels, which would permit an efficient and participatory inventory aswdl as monitoring even at the family level.