Deriving life traits from habitat characteristics: an initial application for neotropical invertebrates from South America
Abstract
Using invertebrate life trait!patterns as a biomonitoring tool for the assessment of human impactin rivers is arising research field. Yet in tropical regions, the lack of detailed biological orecological information results in great difficulties to document such traits. Herein, we proposean approach to infer ecological traits from habitat characteristics, using ecological profiles. Themethod was tested on river invertebrates from the Bolivian Amazon Basin, as apreliminarystep prior to adapting this tool to the context of tropical rivers.