Tom Vincent van der Meer

Hi,

We did some work on the analysis of biological traits and the measurement of functional diversity in the intertidal zone of soft bottom benthos.

A lot of indices have been developed to evaluate in order to have a measure of functional diversity of habitats. All are based on the identification and consideration of biological traits.

The number of indices proposed in the literature is already quite large: Functional Group Richness, Functional Attribute Diversity (Walker and al. 1999), Functional Diversity (Petchey and Gaston 2002), Functional richness, functional evenness et functional divergence (Mason et al. 2005), Functional Regularity (Mouillot and al. 2005)…

Petchey and Gaston (2002, 2006) proposed to calculate an index on an ultra-metric tree obtained from functional distances of the matrix of functional traits between species. This functional diversity index (DF) measures the dispersion of functional traits of communities. It is a transposition of phylogenetic diversity.

Hi !

I did some work on that during my phd that you can download on research gate but the articles are still not published. The manuscripts can give you some ideas on which traits you can choose. The general idea is:

1) do you want to see how your community responds to a disturbance or change -> choose response traits or does it affect a process -> choose effect traits (see the article by Garnbier and Navas 2002 i think)

2) a trait can be response and effect like size but choose traits for which you have data see the articles by the Bonsdorff team in Turku they list lots of traits for Baltic sea soft bottom invertebrates they could also help you to get the raw data.

3) you should have knowledge on the fact that a given, trait influences a process or response you are studying for example bioturbation potential (cf Martin Solan and Ana Queiros research) influences biogeochemical processes

4) the trait can be quantitative like size but often in benthos they are quantitative categorical like the bioturbation potential. In that case you have to choose the modalities for each trait (there is really no official standardization of this which makes it hard...)

5) you also choose to keep lots and lots of traits and code them (enter the data for each species) or to only keep a few you consider none redundant (my way of doing but again your choice)

6) build your species by traits (divided in modalities) matrix + you can add a station by abundance or biomass matrix to weight each species' traits

7) using this you can build a set of functional diversity metrics either just with the traits or also with the abundance or biomass

8) this is a little bit tricky because for lots you have to go from your raw species by trait matrix to a distance matrix between species based on their traits for this see the gower distance for example

This is the begining of all thing :-) good luck !

I worked with Jack Word at the Southern California Research Project when he developed a metric called the Infauna Trophic Index. It was published in the 1979 Southern California Research Project Annual Report. Basically it was a simple method to categorize benthic infauna into trophic groups based on their life history and where and how they feed. Given that this was developed on southern California species so the taxa used may not apply to your region, but I believe the concept is sound. In any event the basic concept may give you some ideas on how to proceed with your research.

Good Luck,

Pete

Hi. Some of my coleagues worked with evaluating functional attributes and functional diversity of estuarine macrozoobenthos (Pieter Van der Linden and Helena Veríssimo at MARE-UC). I adapted the methodologies to rocky shore intertidal communities

Hi, Hilde ,

The question is really very poorly investigated. I have some experience with freshwater communities:

Eg,

Article Structural Stability of Communities (as Exemplified by Benth...

This approach I hope can use for benthos as well

Article Community structure in cryophilic infusoria.

This is avout one index

Article Цилиоценозы Киевского водохранилища. О некоторых вопросах оп...

Andrey

Andrey Kovalchuk - thank you so much!