Preliminary data on the aquatic invertebrate fauna of the Ma River, Thanh Hoa province

A field survey for the invertebrate fauna conducted in the Ma River, Thanh Hoa province in 2013. The research applied multivariable analysis performed by the Primer v.6 software, such as CLUSTER, one-way ANOSIM, BEST and DIVERSE. The results showed a list of 138 aquatic invertebrate species. Of these, most were freshwater wide-distributing species coupled with others characterized for brackish and marine waters. The biodiversity status was quite high compared to several other rivers in the North of Vietnam. The list contained many economic-valued species and 2 of these were listed in the Red Data Book of Vietnam. The aquatic invertebrates showed a significant relation to the two different combinations of physiochemical factors for zooplanktons and zoobenthos, respectively. The values of the species number, abundance and Shannon-Weiner index for both of zooplanktons and zoobenthos showed a curved trend from the upper river segments to lower river segments. These figures for zooplanktons peaked in the middle river segments, whereas the numbers for zoobenthos achieved the highest numbers in the estuaries. The species composition of the estuaries differentiated significantly from that of other freshwater habitats.