Watershed Conservation and Aquatic Benthic Macroinvertebrate Diversity in the Alberto D'Agostini National Park, Tierra del Fuego, Chile

Moorman, M.C., C.B. Anderson, A. Gutiérrez, R. Charlin, & R. Rozzi, 2006. Watershed
conservation and aquatic benthic macroinvertebrate diversity in the Alberto D’Agostini National Park, Tierra del Fuego, Chile. The Anales 34: 41-58.

1. I will be looking at the species composition of a family of aquatic insects, most likely Empididae, from samples collected from the Robalo watershed near Puerto Williams, Chile. This will be done to find exactly which organisms are living there, because large scale identification has not been conducted in this particular watershed before.

2. The Cape Horn region of southern Chile has been declared both a biosphere reserve and a wilderness area, but before this study very little research had been done in the area to look at the conditions of the watersheds. Several watersheds in the D’Agostini National Park were picked as research locations and their water quality, surrounding vegetation, macroinvertebrates, human impact, and invasive species were recorded. Most of the watersheds were considered to be in pristine condition, and half had no sign of human impact. Introduced plant species and beavers were only found on the eastern side of the study area. Identifying the collected invertebrates to species was not a priority in this study, so many of the specimens are identified only to family or genus. By classifying the specimens into feeding groups, most of the insects were found to be dependent on the vegetation along the streams, which could lead to large changes in the composition if the natural vegetation were to be disrupted. Many endemic species were found, and it is likely there were more that have not been identified in a key yet. It was concluded that the watersheds in the park are still in very good condition, and the results found can be used to compare against future data in order to see how much the area has changed from its mostly pristine state.

3. This research was conducted in an area west of Navarino Island, where the samples I’ll be studying came from. Both regions are part of the Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve and have very similar native vegetation and potentially similar aquatic insects. They state in their study that many insects were not keyed to species because the keys did not exist for the, and I’ll probably run into this problem regardless of what family I research. The areas impacted by beavers are of particular interest, because almost all of the streams sampled in the Robalo watershed were downstream of areas beavers had built dams. I now have a better idea of what insects to expect to see in my research, down to genus level for most. This will help me find appropriate keys to start looking at.