Handbook of protocols for standardized measurement of terrestrial invertebrate functional traits

Marco Moretti (1) , André T.C. Dias (2) , Francesco de Bello (3, 4) , Florian Altermatt (5, 6) , Steven L. Chown (7) , Francisco M. Azcárate , James R. Bell (8) , Bertrand Fournier (9) , Mickael Hedde (10, 11) , Joaquín Hortal (12, 13) , Sébastien Ibanez (14) , José Paulo Sousa (15) , Jacintha Ellers (16) , Matty P. Berg (16, 17)

1 Biodiversity and Conservation Biology
2 Departamento de Ecologia, Instituto de Biologia Roberto Alcântara Gomes
3 CAS - Czech Academy of Sciences [Prague]
4 Faculty of Sciences
5 Department of Aquatic Ecology
6 IEU - Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies
7 School of Biological Sciences, VIC
8 Rothamsted Research
9 LCE - Laboratoire Chrono-environnement (UMR 6249)
10 ECOSYS - Ecologie fonctionnelle et écotoxicologie des agroécosystèmes
11 Université Paris-Saclay
12 Departamento de Biogeografía y Cambio Global
13 Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes (Ce3C)
14 LECA - Laboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine
15 Centre for Functional ecology
16 Department of Ecological Science, Faculty of Earth and Life Sciences
17 Conservation Ecology group, Groningen Institute for Evolutionary life sciences

Trait-based approaches are increasingly being used to test mechanisms underlying species assemblages and biotic interactions across a wide range of organisms including terrestrial arthropods and to investigate consequences for ecosystem processes. Such an approach relies on the standardized measurement of functional traits that can be applied across taxa and regions. Currently, however, unified methods of trait measurements are lacking for terrestrial arthropods and related macroinvertebrates (terrestrial invertebrates hereafter). Here, we present a comprehensive review and detailed protocol for a set of 29 traits known to be sensitive to global stressors and to affect ecosystem processes and services. We give recommendations how to measure these traits under standardized conditions across various terrestrial invertebrate taxonomic groups. We provide considerations and approaches that apply to almost all traits described, such as the selection of species and individuals needed for the measurements, the importance of intraspecific trait variability, how many populations or communities to sample and over which spatial scales. The approaches outlined here provide a means to improve the reliability and predictive power of functional traits to explain community assembly, species diversity patterns, and ecosystem processes and services within and across taxa and trophic levels, allowing comparison of studies and running meta-analyses across regions and ecosystems. This handbook is a crucial first step towards standardizing trait methodology across the most studied terrestrial invertebrate groups, and the protocols are aimed to balance general applicability and requirements for special cases or particular taxa. Therefore, we envision this handbook as a common platform to which researches can further provide methodological input for additional special cases.

Mots clés: species features; species characteristics; physiology; morphology; feeding; behaviour; life-history; functional diversity

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Marco Moretti, André T.C. Dias, Francesco de Bello, Florian Altermatt, Steven L. Chown, et al.. Handbook of protocols for standardized measurement of terrestrial invertebrate functional traits. Functional Ecology, 2017, 31 (3), pp.558-567. ⟨10.1111/1365-2435.12776⟩. ⟨hal-01690257⟩