Abbreviations and other explanations

Coding systems for ecological parameters

For most purposes in community ecology research and freshwater ecosystem assessment, ecological information for taxa needs to be transformed into numerical values. Simple "yes/no" coding, which either or not assigns a species to only one category of an ecological parameter, did not always reflect the complex characteristics and the heterogeneity of the species' adaptations. Therefore, three options of coding were used, depending on structure and availability of ecological knowledge:

• Ten point assignment system: Most freshwater species inhabit several habitat types or utilise various food sources during their ontogenesis, rather than being solely dependent on a single habitat or food source. The ten point assignment system considers these gradients of habitats, feedings types and other relevant parameters. It is based on the average distributions, occurrences or behaviours of a taxon within the environmental gradient or organismic flexibility under consideration. The ten point assignment system was first introduced by Zelinka and Marvan (1961) for the classification of saprobic valences and was extended by Moog (1995) to other parameters, such as stream zonation preferences and feeding types. Within freshwaterecology.info the ten point assignment system was used for coding the majority of those parameters, which comprise several categories.

  Example for the parameter "stream zonation preference": If 70% of a species’ records are observed in spring brooks and 30% in the upper trout region, 7 out of 10 points will be allocated to the category "hypocrenal" (spring brook) and 3 points to "epirhithral" (upper trout region) to describe the expected occurrence of this species within the longitudinal zonation of a river. For all other categories "0" will be used.

• Single category assignment system: The single category assignment system is used, if a taxon can be allocated to only one category of an ecological parameter. If the category applies to the taxon, "1" is assigned, if not, "0" is used.

  Example for the parameter "temperature range preference": If a species only lives in cold water, then "1" will be assigned to the category "cold stenotherm", the categories "warm stenotherm" and "eurytherm" will get a "0".

• Presence/absence assignment system: The presence/absence assignment system is used, if a taxon can be allocated to more than one criterion/category of an ecological parameter.

  Example for the parameter "altitude preference (WFD)": If a species occurs in an altitude range from 100 m to 700 m above sea level, then a "1" will be assigned to the categories "between 200 and 800 m sea level" and "below 200 m sea level" meaning that the species is present in these altitudes. For the category "above 800 m sea level" the value "0" is used indicating that the species is not present in this region.

Moog, O. (Ed.), 1995. Fauna Aquatica Austriaca – A Comprehensive Species Inven- tory of Austrian Aquatic Organisms with Ecological Notes. Federal Ministry for Agriculture and Forestry, Wasserwirtschaftskataster Vienna: Loose-leaf Binder.
Zelinka, M., Marvan, P., 1961. Zur Präzisierung der biologischen Klassifikation der Reinheit fließender Gewässer. Arch. Hydrobiol. 57, 389–407.

Information for traits of benthic macro-invertebrates according to Tachet et al. (2010)

One of the goals of the Tachet et al. (2010) handbook was to investigate autecological information from literature, to synthesise the very large and scattered biological information on benthic macro-invertebrates, readily accessible only to specialists, into easily interpreted sets of attributes including features concerning the life cycle of taxa, the resistance or resilience potential of organisms, general physiological traits, behavioural aspects of reproduction or nutrition of organisms, and multi-scale descriptors of taxon/habitat relationships. They resolved "traits" describing biological characteristics and ecological preferences of taxa into a number of "categories".
They searched for a simple coding procedure (i.e. the "fuzzy coding"; cf. Chevenet et al. 1994) that assigns a score to each taxon describing its affinity for the different categories of a trait. This score, allocated to each category of a trait, ranges from 0 indicating "no affinity" to 5 indicating "high affinity". Thereby, the relevant features of a taxon were described by the relative distribution of the information among the categories of each trait. This procedure was a pertinent and simple way to "translate" the available knowledge about species traits of organisms into numerical values. It also avoided the obligate assignment of a taxon to a single category, which can lead to inaccurate characterisation of biological or ecological trait profiles. In the case of missing information for a taxon and a trait (i.e. taxa not documented), they coded "0" for all the categories. Eleven biological traits (63 categories) and 10 ecological traits (50 categories) were coded for 472 benthic macro-invertebrate taxa.

Chevenet F., Dolédec S. & Chessel D. (1994): A fuzzy coding approach for the analysis of long-term ecological data. Freshwater Biology, 31, 295-309.
Tachet H., Bournaud M., Richoux P. & Usseglio-Polatera P. (2010): Invertébrés d'eau douce - systématique, biologie, écologie. CNRS Editions, Paris, 600 p.

Abbreviations

All abbreviations, which are displayed on the Result-page are explained on the Search-page. On the Result-page an explanation is available with tooltips. Just move your mouse pointer over the abbreviation and the full name will appear. Additionally the abbreviations are explained if you click on the -icon in the parameter headline.

The following abbreviation table summarises all abbreviations used on freshwaterecology.info. It also offers explanations of individual parameters and categories, where available. The table can be sorted per organism group, per parameter, per category, alphabetically and it is also possible to filter for all entries.