EARLY HEARING DETECTION AND INTERVENTION VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
MARCH 2-5, 2021

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5/22/2018  |   10:00 AM - 10:15 AM   |  ARE TRAITS AN EFFECTIVE TOOL FOR IDENTIFYING STRESSORS AND ESTABLISHING STRESSOR CRITERIA?   |  330 A

ARE TRAITS AN EFFECTIVE TOOL FOR IDENTIFYING STRESSORS AND ESTABLISHING STRESSOR CRITERIA?

Stream ecosystems are subject to multiple stressors such as hydromorphological changes, excessive nutrients and toxicants. Beside natural variation, biotic interactions and migration processes, the co-occurrence of stressors hampers the identification of causes of biological impairment. Stressor-specific biological response relationships are required to derive likely causes of impairment and to identify potential stressor interactions from field monitoring data. Trait-based approaches that rely on the translation of taxonomic community data to trait community data may aid in stressor identification and to develop stressor criteria. I will present results from studies in agricultural streams from different global regions (Central and Northern Europe, Russia, South-East Australia), where trait-based approaches were successfully used to establish stressor-response relationships between toxicants and stream invertebrate communities. In addition, I discuss challenges of trait-based approaches to with respect to stressor-specificity and present some solutions. These comprise improving taxonomic resolution and coverage with metabarcoding, considering trait intercorrelations, establishing relative sensitivity rankings and improving models for stressor interactions. Overall, I suggest that trait-based approaches represent a promising tool to identify and quantify stressor-specific biological responses, though several challenges remain.

  • Invertebrate
  • Assessment
  • Community

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Presenters/Authors

Ralf Schäfer (), University of Koblenz-Landau, Institute for Environmental Sciences, schaefer-ralf@uni-landau.de;


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