Uso da abordagem diversidade funcional na estrutura das comunidades de macroinvertebrados aquáticos

Abstract

Aquatic macroinvertebrates are largely used to evaluate the health and functioning of lotic ecosystems. These organizations operate in maintenance of ecosystem processes and are responsible for nutrient cycling and energy flow. But understand the mechanisms that structure such communities is still a challenge to ecological studies, with that comes the need to study new approaches and metrics investigative In this context it was inserted the functional diversity whose approach is based on morphological, physiological or behavioral characteristics of the species that play a role in the community or ecosystem.. In this sense, we did a literature review to investigate the trends and global gaps of functional diversity of aquatic macroinvertebrates of lotic systems. Studies with this approach are relatively new to the group and showed a rapid growth over the years, but has been little used in neotropical regions. Among the investigated items found variations in basic concepts of functional approach between the articles, which can lead to erroneous interpretations. We also find that the functional responses of aquatic insects were more abundant among the macroinvertebrates and more frequently in studies evaluating the effect of environmental impacts anthropic. At last, we tested the applicability of the functional diversity approach. We evaluated the functional and taxonomic responses of the orders Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera of streams inserted in areas of oil palm plantations comparing them to streams of forested areas of Eastern Amazon. We found that the abundance of EPT differ among communities, being higher in plantations, while the species richness was greater in the forest, with the loss of nine genera EPT in oil palm streams. Even with this biological loss, functional diversity did not differ between communities. However, when we analyze the characteristics of the environment, there were differences in pH, number of trunks and proximity to roads, and these, along with water temperature were able to select the attributes functional trophic habit and body size in the EPT community.