MACROINVERTEBRATES OF ITALIAN MOUNTAIN LAKES: A REVIEW

The paper summarizes the state of knowledge and the evolution of the researches on benthic macroinvertebrates of Italian mountain lakes, and identifies key aspects that need to be further explored. Mountain lakes have been investigated since the end of the XIX century. In the beginning, studies focused mainly on their geography, geology, geomorphology and hydrology. Only lately, interests arise on their hydro-chemistry and biology, in relation to water acidification and, in rare cases, to eutrophication. In particular, in the 1920s, the studies dealt mainly on lake basins morphology and their genesis. Later, researches were driven mainly by the growing need of hydroelectric power plants, shifting the attention on their hydrological and geological aspects. Nonetheless, more detailed limno-biological studies began in confined areas. During the 1960s, attention was redirected to the alpine environment in terms of environmental awareness, for the creation of parks, and to analyse the alteration of water quality caused by the deposition of transported pollutants from the lowlands. This created the opportunity to combine observations on both the hydro-chemical and biological aspects, to reach a synoptic view of these environments. It is only in the mid-1990s that ISI journals came to power and, striving for higher visibility, strongly promoted the production of papers. In this decade, the application of paleo-limnology, the creation of a long term ecological research network, the never abandoned idea of implementing best practice management for freshwaters conservation purposes, and the growing attention on the global climatic change gave new impulse to the studies on mountain lakes. Since the 2000s, biodiversity preservation, biological recovery, environmental key-drivers (mainly nitrogen increase) have become the new focus of the current research activities.