Assessing the health of European rivers using functional ecological guilds of fish communities: standardising species classification and approaches to metric selection

By R. Noble, I. Cowx, D. Goffaux, P. Kestemont. 2007

176 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The functional ecological guild approach is the cornerstone for the development of Indices of Biotic Integrity and multi-metric indices to assess the ecological status of aquatic systems. These indices combine metrics (unit-specific measures of a functional component of the fish community known to respond to degradation) into a single measure of ecological assessment. The guild approach provides an operational unit linking individual species characteristics with the community as a whole. Species are grouped into guilds based on some degree of overlap in their ecological niches, regardless of taxonomic relationships. Despite European fish species having been classified into ecological guilds, classification has not been standardised Europe-wide or within the context of classifying species into guilds from which metrics can be developed for ecological assessment purposes. This paper examines the approach used by the EU project FAME to classify European fish species into consistent ecological guilds and to identify suitable metrics as basic tools for the development of a standardised ecological assessment method for European rivers to meet the requirements of the Water Framework Directive.

Subfields: Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3fb66e693dcb202555a31428722eec126578e3aa

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

Citations in the corpus

Fish‐based methods for assessing European running waters: a synthesis (2007, background): “Different metric modalities (number of species, percentage of species, density, relative density, biomass, etc.) were tested ( Noble et al. 2007a ).”
Ecology of European Barbel Barbus Barbus: Implications for River, Fishery, and Conservation Management (2011, background): “barbus as being rheophilic and/or eurytopic and in determining the functional guilds in which the species should be classed in fish stock assessments (Noble et al., 2007).”
A review of existing fish assemblage indicators and methodologies (2007, background): “Despite a huge diversity in metrics chosen worldwide (Noble et al. 2007), most IBIs have FISH ASSEMBLAGE INDICATORS AND METHODOLOGIES 399”
Microplastics in freshwater fishes: Occurrence, impacts and future perspectives (2021, background): “Freshwater fishes comprise a highly diverse taxonomic group, covering a range of TPs, ecological guilds and life history strategies (Noble et al., 2007).”
Effective monitoring of freshwater fish (2019, background): “…biological/ecological integrity, as the indices require data at multiple organization levels, from size structure to assemblage richness (e.g. Noble et al., 2007; Pont et al., 2007; Schmutz et al., 2000), often in conjunction with data on habitat quality (e.g. Van Liefferinge et al., 2010;…”
Exploring the effects of salinization on trophic diversity in freshwater ecosystems: a quantitative review (2018, background): “…al. (1996, 2008), Thorp & Rogers (2011), Ramı́rez & Gutiérrez-Fonseca (2014) Herbivore Eats large amounts of plants materials Plant materials Vertebrate Noble et al. (2007) Scraper Feeds on materials on rocks, wood or hard surfaces Periphyton, detritus particles Invertebrate Vertebrate Merritt…”