A new tool for assessment and monitoring of community and ecosystem change based on multivariate abundance data integration from different taxonomic groups

Melanie Mueller,Joachim Pander,Juergen Geist

doi:10.1186/2193-2697-3-12

Melanie Mueller, Joachim Pander + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/2193-2697-3-12

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Abstract

Abstract Background The integrative assessment of responses to environmental disturbance simultaneously considering multiple taxonomic groups or guilds has become increasingly important in ecological monitoring. The most common solution to combine data of different taxonomic groups is the calculation of compound indices comprising several individual indicators. However, these indices run the risk of cancelling out underlying trends when single components change in different directions. In contrast, multivariate community analyses are supposed to be more sensitive to detect environmental responses, since information on the abundance of multiple species is not reduced to a single dimension. Results We propose a new standardised approach for multivariate community analyses on ecosystem scale, based on a combined data matrix from different taxonomic groups. The power of these multivariate analyses is compared with two single score indices integrating data from all involved taxonomic groups (Ecological Quality Class according to the European Water Framework Directive and Shannon diversity). The multivariate indication of ecosystem change was much more sensitive and powerful in detecting and monitoring environmental impacts and restoration effects than single numeric score indices. Conclusions Compared to common monitoring systems based on compound indices, the multivariate analysis of multiple taxonomic groups is feasible with the same sampling effort, and independent of the investigation scale and the occurrence of certain indicator taxa. Since ecological community data are structured similarly throughout freshwater, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, the presented methods for data combination and multivariate indication can be analogously applied in any other habitats and can improve data integration across ecosystem borders.

Highlights

The integrative assessment of responses to environmental disturbance simultaneously considering multiple taxonomic groups or guilds has become increasingly important in ecological monitoring
Despite of the availability of multivariate methods that allow for the simultaneous inclusion of a large number of variables without reducing information to single numeric scores which all proofed to be very effective in the analysis of single taxonomic groups in the past (Reynoldson et al 1997; Mueller et al 2011; RIVPACS-like macroinvertebrate evaluation systems: Wright et al 2000; Smith et al 1999), these techniques are currently not applied to combine species abundance data from several levels of biological organisation within one analysis
We propose and validate that (I) the generation of a combined species abundance data matrix from multiple taxonomic groups based on different sampling techniques and investigation scales is possible if standardisation/normalisation procedures which account for differences in species numbers and numerical scale are appropriately considered. (II) The integrative consideration of multiple taxonomic groups into multivariate community response analysis does not reduce the capability of detecting environmental gradients and differences between treatments compared to single taxonomic groups. (III) Combining information from multiple taxonomic groups using multivariate analysis is advantageous for the quantification of environmental changes compared to univariate (i.e. Shannon Index) or descriptive (i.e. Water Framework Directive (WFD) Ecological Quality Class) analyses of single compound indices

Summary

Introduction

The integrative assessment of responses to environmental disturbance simultaneously considering multiple taxonomic groups or guilds has become increasingly important in ecological monitoring. Despite of the availability of multivariate methods that allow for the simultaneous inclusion of a large number of variables without reducing information to single numeric scores (e.g. multidimensional scaling, principle components analysis, correspondence analysis) which all proofed to be very effective in the analysis of single taxonomic groups in the past (Reynoldson et al 1997; Mueller et al 2011; RIVPACS-like macroinvertebrate evaluation systems: Wright et al 2000; Smith et al 1999), these techniques are currently not applied to combine species abundance data from several levels of biological organisation within one analysis. The necessity for applying more standardized procedures which integrate community and ecosystem changes over multiple taxonomic groups and guilds has been proposed for assessment of freshwater ecosystem functioning (Geist 2011) as well as for aquatic restoration (Pander and Geist 2013), but may be useful for any other ecosystem type

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