Bioindication potential of the Coleoptera

Different families of Coleoptera ambiguously respond to the pollution of SPZs with industrial emissions. For example, the SPZ of Volgograd aluminum plant has the changing biodiversity of insect communities at different distances from the pollution source. The increasing level of pollution is accompanied by the reduction in species abundance. At a distance of 200 m a special ecological zone with the specific composition of the entomofauna was formed. It is significantly different from other habitats. No Cerambycidae species may survive in the zone of maximum pollution, and the number of Curculionidae species is reduced significantly. The number of Cerambycidae decreases by more than 40 % in the presence of even minimal contamination. The most sensitive bioindicators are represented by such insects as Cerambycidae, Curculionidae and Chrysomelidae. Changes in the indices can be described by the function y = arctan (x), where x is the distance from the pollution source (in meters). The specificity of this function is to identify levels of possible changes of species richness and numerical abundance of communities. On the basis of trigonometric functions describing the changes in the species composition and abundance, the authors offered the method for assessing the quality of the environment in SPZs. The use of three families of insects opens up prospects of differentiation zones of technogenic pressure.