Chapter 10 - Freshwater Conservation and Biomonitoring of Structure and Function: Genes to Ecosystems

Abstract

Biomonitoring and conservation of freshwaters to date have fallen short of incorporating a fully ecological and evolutionary perspective. Due to this, the predictive capacity of current biomonitoring approaches is restricted and will have a limited ability to adapt in the face of rapid and global habitat modification and climate change. We briefly outline the present state of biomonitoring as well as some of its limitations. We then address how incorporating an ecological and evolutionary approach to biomonitoring and conservation will allow us to better understand interactions between the evolution and ecology of a species. This approach, alongside the incorporation of measures of ecosystem functioning and aided by new technologies such as novel molecular markers or the use of microbes, may facilitate the future development of a more comprehensive and effective biomonitoring framework.