Monitoring with benthic macroinvertebrates: advantages and disadvantages of body size descriptors

被引:60
作者
Basset, A [1 ]
Sangiorgio, F [1 ]
Pinna, M [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Lecce, Dept Biol & Environm Sci & Technol, I-73100 Lecce, Italy
关键词
coastal lagoons; benthic macroinvertebrates; body-size-abundance distributions; ecosystem health;
D O I
10.1002/aqc.649
中图分类号
X [环境科学、安全科学];
学科分类号
08 ; 0830 ;
摘要
1. The search for simple and effective descriptors of biological ecosystem components is a major challenge of monitoring aquatic ecosystem health. 2. The relevance of body-size-related descriptors of benthic invertebrate guilds in monitoring the health of transitional aquatic ecosystems is discussed. The rationale is that macroinvertebrate body size relates body-size-abundance distributions to disturbance pressures through individual energetics, population dynamics, interspecific interactions and species coexistence responses. 3. Body size is generally easy to measure and amenable to intercalibration procedures, it is comparable across taxa, guilds and sites, and, as a community feature, it is expected to vary on disturbance gradients, according to energetic and ecological constraints. 4. The mechanistic relevance of individual body size as a community feature, through coexistence relationships, still requires field and laboratory tests; standard methods to analyse body-size abundance distributions are not yet fully developed. 5. Field experiments on coastal lagoons and freshwater ecosystems of southern Italy, which were designed to test the relevance of body-size-related constraints on the organization of detritus-based benthic guilds, are reviewed. 6. Study cases emphasized a number of interesting features of body size and related descriptors, that support their relevance as benthic invertebrates descriptors of ecosystem health: (a) body-size-abundance distributions are consistently less variable than taxonomic composition; (b) the width of body-size-abundance distribution is mainly due to the interspecific component; (c) the descriptors of body-size-abundance distributions seem to respond on environmental gradients and generally co-vary with species density, richness and diversity, on which most of the monitoring programmes actually rely. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.
引用
收藏
页码:S43 / S58
页数:16
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