The running waters macroinvertebrates community: sampling techniques.

The community of running water macroinvertebrates has proved to be one of key subjects for fluvial ecology and bioindication studies, thanks both to the different trophic roles within the range of taxa and to the ease with which they may be collected and identified. However, the complex nature of this community creates problems concerning the complete identification of the full range of taxa, even when restricting the taxonomic classification to families and genera. Even so, the need to use the community for the implementation of indexes of Ecological Status of freshwaters and for the detection of reference conditions, necessarily means a deeper knowledge of this structure.