Comparing efficacy of different taxonomic resolutions and surrogates in detecting changes in soft bottom assemblages due to coastal defence structures

Analysis of sampling methods of estuarine benthic macrofaunal assemblages: sampling gear, mesh size, and taxonomic resolution

“…Thus, the cost/benefit ratio is better as the calculated index value decreases. This formula has been adopted by other researchers as well (Lampadariou et al, 2005;Mendes et al, 2007;Puente & Juanes, 2008;Bertasi et al, 2009). …”

An approach to determining potential surrogates for analyzing ecological patterns of planktonic ciliate communities in marine ecosystems

“…So far, monitoring programs using ciliated protozoan communities have traditionally been based on the species abundance data (Coppellotti and Matarazzo 2000;Xu et al 2002;Jiang et al 2011a, b). However, the identification of ciliates at species level requires a skilled taxonomic expertise and is laborious and thus limits the use of ciliated protozoa for monitoring researches, especially by the environmental agencies that are often dealing with large scales in a limited time span (Lovell et al 2007;Bertasi et al 2009;Liu et al 2010;Shao et al 2010;Yu et al 2010;Xu et al 2011a, b).…”

“…For this purpose, taxonomic sufficiency has been received increasing attentions in terms of its basic concept that anthropogenic impacts can be detected using coarse taxonomic resolutions without a significant loss of information, thus avoiding long and difficult precise taxonomic identifications and saving time and costs (Ellis 1985;Vanderklift et al 1998;Olsgard and Somerfield 2000;Pagola-Carte et al 2002;Dauvin et al 2003;Mendes et al 2007;Puente and Juanes 2008;Bertasi et al 2009). The other technique is to identify either a sufficient numerical resolution or a taxonomic/ecological group as a surrogate of the whole species assemblages (Olsgard and Somerfield 2000;Bertasi et al 2009;Carneiro et al 2010;Xu et al 2011a). Otherwise, data transformations have been known to affect the results of multivariate analyses by weighting the relative contributions to results of abundant and rare taxa (Stark et al 2003;Anderson et al 2005;Xu et al 2011a).…”

“…Otherwise, data transformations have been known to affect the results of multivariate analyses by weighting the relative contributions to results of abundant and rare taxa (Stark et al 2003;Anderson et al 2005;Xu et al 2011a). Although the effectiveness of taxonomic/ecological surrogates has been reported on metazoan, phytoplanktonic, and periphytic protozoan assemblages, such studies have yet to be carried out on planktonic ciliate communities for marine bioassessments and biological conservations (Bertasi et al 2009;Carneiro et al 2010;Xu et al 2011a).…”

Assemblages and habitat preferences of soft bottom Antarctic Amphipoda: Admiralty Bay case study

“…They were successfully used in studying humanimpacted areas (Bertasi et al 2009), naturally disturbed regions (Włodarska-Kowalczuk and Kędra 2007) but also non-disturbed areas (Tataranni et al 2009). Terlizzi et al (2009) also found that replacing species by genera or families do not cause much information loss in case of betadiversity of mollusks in four marine localities in Norway, Italy, New Zealand and the Arctic.…”