Abstract
We carried out an overview of the studies on the traits of the meiofauna of the littoral zone of lakes to investigate the question relating to the Raunkiaeran shortfall (lack of knowledge on biological traits). For this purpose, we selected a series of keywords associated with response and effect traits (feeding habits, locomotion and substrate relation, body size, shape and mass, life history, reproductive strategy, respiration and thermal tolerance) and we counted the relative frequency of occurrence in a set of scientific papers retrieved from Web of Science. The results showed that, except for the traits related to diet and feeding habits, the Raunkiaeran shortfall is very pronounced for all meiofaunal taxa of the littoral zone of lakes, especially for those related to soft-bodied organisms. The reason behind this deficiency concerns many aspects ranging from the high taxonomic expertise required to the intrinsic difficulties of observing organisms of such a small size. The relationship with temperature has not been sufficiently explored and formalized in any of the examined traits; this research aspect needs to be rapidly addressed since the prospects of climate change impacts on lake littorals are expected to be particularly severe.
Highlights
Freshwater ecosystems are increasingly subject to frequent and intense threats which are caused directly or indirectly by humans [1,2]
Functional traits can be divided into response and effect traits, where the response traits refer to the way an organism respond to certain environmental factors, while the effect traits are the contributions of an organism, species or population to ecosystem functioning [9,10]
In this study we reviewed the scientific publications concerning the meiofauna of the littoral zone of lakes, to investigate one of the seven meiofaunal biodiversity shortfalls [26], namely the Raunkiaeran shortfall
Summary
Freshwater ecosystems are increasingly subject to frequent and intense threats which are caused directly or indirectly by humans [1,2]. Interacting threats in freshwater ecosystems lead to multiple alterations [4] and a massive biodiversity loss with a strong impact on the quality and quantity of the related ecosystem services [5]. The biomonitoring of freshwaters is traditionally based on a taxonomic approach that evaluates the status of river, lake, and groundwater ecosystems by assessing the taxonomic richness, species composition and abundance distribution of the biological assemblages [7]. Traits are measurable functional properties of an organism (or species, population and even community), such as body size, longevity, or type of diet [8]. Integrated response and effect traits have proved to be very useful to disentangle environmental dynamics influencing the ecological organization and ecosystem services [11] and to determine the extent of ecosystem perturbations [12]
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