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(1) To synthesize a very large and scattered biological information readily accessible only to specialists into easily interpreted sets of species attributes.
(2) To demonstrate relationships among biological and/or ecological traits of organisms at different spatial scales.
(3) To illustrate the importance of the different traits to separate functional groupings at the STAR identification level.
(4) To define uniform functional groups of taxa that may serve as multiple probes for different types and intensities of human impact.
(5) To identify which combinations of traits or functional groups are capable of indicating a certain stressor and a certain intensity of stress.
(6) To identify which combination of traits or functional groups are capable of providing signals of early- and late- warning.
Characteristics describing the 'life history' of organisms will be viewed as 'biological traits' and characteristics describing organism/habitat relationships as 'ecological traits'.
Information on the biological and ecological traits of all the freshwater macroinvertebrate taxa and diatom sampled during the STAR programme will be synthesized. Patterns of traits will be derived from a close examination of available knowledge accumulated over the 20th century. The fuzzy coding procedure (Chevenet et al. 1994) will be used to describe the link between a taxon and each of the variables, providing information both on the amplitude of the taxon preference or tolerance and the intensity of the link for each modality.
A user-friendly data base will be developed in a Member state (France) in collaboration with a NAS partner (Poland).Using this autecological data base, biological groups and ecological groups with 'similar' suites of traits, will be defined according to:
Data about benthic macroinvertebrate and diatom communities and European running waters (acquired during the STAR programme) will be used to illustrate how multiple biological traits could provide a measure for the large-scale biomonitoring of the functional composition of communities. Previous studies have already demonstrated:
Evidence of a consistently contrasting response of some of the trait categories to different types of human impact has been already given (Archaimbault et al. 2001; Statzner et al. 2001, Usseglio-Polatera et al. 2000; 2001).
For each trait, a reference typology based on a set of sampled or tested communities taking into account affinities of the full potential fauna of a given area (e.g. taxa already observed on a set of reference sites of this area) will be defined, using multivariate analyses. Different scales (e.g. ecoregion, biogeographic zone, Europe) may be envisioned.
This reference typology may be used:
A comparative analysis of taxononomical and bio/ecological responses of macro-invertebrate and diatom communities to different stressors will be made, according to stream types using complete sets of data from sites of two core stream types (cf. Workpackage 7) and 10 additional stream types (cf. Workpackage 8) distributed across Europe. The major objective will be to optimally determine the common structure between the faunal and the bio/ecological sets of data, and then to interpret faunal differences among samples in terms of differences in combinations of biological and ecological traits of communities.
A typology of macro-invertebrate and diatom community responses (in terms of combinations of traits) to different stressor-types and stressor-intensities will be made, using multivariate techniques and inferential statistics. Other taxonomic groups will be examined if time permits.
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