Taxonomic sufficiency in detecting hydrological changes and reproducing ordination patterns: A test using planktonic ciliates

Coral cover and rubble cryptofauna abundance and diversity at outplanted reefs in Okinawa, Japan

“…Further advantages of using phylum-level data include reduced operative costs (studies which use phylum-level identification can be up to 95% less expensive than those which employ species-level identification) for sorting and identification (Khan, 2006). Taxonomic sufficiency of phylum-level data has been confirmed for a wide range of studies, for terrestrial (Souza et al, 2016), freshwater (Cabral et al, 2017) and marine (Anderson et al, 2005) ecosystems.…”

Assessing the effectiveness of surrogates for species over time: Evidence from decadal monitoring of a Mediterranean transitional water ecosystem

“…Indeed, several processes such as, for instance, natural fluctuations in environmental factors or variations in the magnitude of human-driven alterations to the investigated system, could cause changes in composition and/or shifts in relative abundance of species, so that surrogates proved to be effective for specific time intervals might not perform equally well in subsequent periods (Musco et al, 2011;Thiault et al, 2015). The few studies accounting for multiple times of sampling showed that temporal variations in species assemblages may be still noticed analysing genera or families (e.g., Musco et al, 2011;Cabral et al, 2017), suggesting that the use of coarser taxonomy could be a promising approach to enhance cost-effectiveness of monitoring. However, most evidence concerned the effects of taxonomic resolution on ordination of data or short-term experiments (e.g., Cabral et al, 2017) and, above all, involved a range of environmental contexts too limited to consolidate the integration of species surrogacy in routine monitoring programmes.…”

“…The few studies accounting for multiple times of sampling showed that temporal variations in species assemblages may be still noticed analysing genera or families (e.g., Musco et al, 2011;Cabral et al, 2017), suggesting that the use of coarser taxonomy could be a promising approach to enhance cost-effectiveness of monitoring. However, most evidence concerned the effects of taxonomic resolution on ordination of data or short-term experiments (e.g., Cabral et al, 2017) and, above all, involved a range of environmental contexts too limited to consolidate the integration of species surrogacy in routine monitoring programmes. The substantial lack of studies that have tested the performance of a given set of surrogates in successive monitoring campaigns further increases the uncertainty.…”

Impacts of coastal armouring on rubble mobile cryptofauna at shallow coral reefs in Okinawa, Japan

“…Data of higher taxonomic levels are also less affected by gaps in the baseline data from taxonomic databases. Taxonomic sufficiency (the use of higher-level taxa) has been analysed and employed in a wide range of studies concerning terrestrial (Souza et al 2016), freshwater (Cabral et al 2017) and marine , Biondi et al 2020 ecosystems. Taxonomic accuracy was confirmed using the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS Editorial Board 2019).…”