Abstract: Benthic macroinvertebrates are the main components of the aquatic ecosystem and play a key role in function and health of aquatic ecosystem. With the increasing emphasis on the aquatic ecosystem management based on watershed integrity in China, the studies on aquatic ecosystem health is more and more detailed, thus the study of benthic macroinvertebrates are improved not only in depth but also in breadth. The main study tasks, impacting factors and analytical methods on benthic macroinvertebrates were summarized at home and abroad in recent years. The results indicate that the response of benthic macroinverebrates to the variation of aquatic ecosystem is significant on the spatial scale, so the effects of natural environment, habitat conditions and water quality on benthic animal diversity and its community structure in the different spatial scales were analyzed. The variations of water environment factors caused by the human activities or the damage of habitat could influence directly the species composition and community features of benthic animal according to the integrated analysis of various factors. The analytical methods on benthic animal could be classified as two types, namely, a model analytical method and a biology index assessment method. Which one is selected in the actual application depends on the features of model and index.

Key words: Macroinvertebrates of benthic animal, Aquatic ecosystems, Environmental factors, Biomonitoring, Health assessment