A proposed unified terminology of species traits in stream ecology

By Dénes Schmera, János Podani, J. Heino, T. Erős, N. LeRoy Poff. Freshwater Science, 2015

87 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Traits-based community analyses are receiving increasing attention. However, consistent interpretation of empirical results and ecological understanding in stream ecology are limited by ambiguous terminology. Furthermore, the measurement scales used to analyze trait data, especially ordinal-scale data, are often inappropriately applied. We identify and discuss these shortcomings and offer a solution for an operative and algebraically correct treatment of traits and a unified nomenclature that facilitates direct comparison among traits-based studies. A unified terminology allows for logical translation among existing, alternative trait nomenclatures and should facilitate communication of research findings among stream ecologists and more directly connect stream traits-based research with general ecology.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/de3cf42791e25b5f831e6c25135ab7930094fc35

How researchers see this paper

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

In Ecological Modeling

1. J. Heino
2. Dénes Schmera
3. T. Erős
4. János Podani
5. Sylvain Dolédec
6. Pierre Legendre
7. A. Baselga
8. J. Soininen

In Ecology

1. Dénes Schmera
2. T. Erős
3. J. Heino
4. János Podani
5. Sylvain Dolédec
6. J. Soininen
7. G. Grenouillet
8. Luis Mauricio Bini

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

1. Dénes Schmera
2. T. Erős
3. J. Heino
4. János Podani
5. Sylvain Dolédec
6. Pierre Legendre
7. J. Soininen
8. A. Baselga

Citations in the corpus

• Functional richness: Overview of indices and underlying concepts (2018, unknown): “Finally, we join Schmera et al. (2015) in arguing that researchers should clearly separate concept and measure in order to avoid any confusion in the interpretation of results, and in consequence, in the resulting conclusions.”
• Functional diversity: a review of methodology and current knowledge in freshwater macroinvertebrate research (2016, methodology): “This measure was also used as ''number of traits present'' (see Milner et al., 2011) or should be called as ''number of trait states'' following the terminology of Schmera et al. (2015).”