Diversity of freshwater macrobenthos and its usein biological assessment: a critical review ofcurrent applications

摘要

Numerous procedures for biological assessment employ different measures of benthos diversity as a main or additionalmetric. This paper argues that biological diversity of freshwater macrobenthos is not a strong metric for biologicalassessment. It is extremely difficult to estimate accurately the taxonomic diversity of the whole macrobenthos. In particular,taxonomic diversity estimations are typically based on taxonomic misconceptions. Moreover, even if it is accuratelyestimated, it has too many drawbacks to be a reliable metric: it is affected by many factors important only for particulartaxa and dependent on parameters that are extremely difficult to define and to quantify. Certain requirements are presentedand discussed that are necessary to apply macrobenthos diversity in biological assessments.