Aquatic insect’s biodiversity: Importance and their conservation

Abstract

Insects are important representatives of the biodiversity of ecosystems. A majority of the insect species lives in freshwater environments, such as swamps, ponds, lakes, springs, streams and rivers these are called aquatic insects. There are about 8600 species of insects, falling under 12 orders, 150 families, known to inhabit diverse freshwater ecosystems. They play important ecological roles in keeping freshwater ecosystems functioning properly. There are many different kinds of aquatic insects as almost every type of freshwater environment habitat from puddles to river to lakes, including both lentic and lotic habitats, can belong to various species of aquatic insects. Aquatic insects are considered as model organisms in analyzing the structure and function of the freshwater ecosystem because of their high abundance, high birth rate with short generation time, large biomass and rapid colonization of freshwater habitat. The aquatic biodiversity gets affected by several factors such as industrial pollution or anthropogenic activities. Hence, this chapter is discussing about the diversity, habitats, roles, constraints and conservation of aquatic insects.