Overcoming data constraints: Using macrobenthic functional feeding guilds for ecological assessment of an anthropogenically impacted estuary
Abstract
Progressive anthropogenic alteration of estuaries has caused extensive habitat degradation, leading to partial or complete loss of benthic communities. Evaluating the ecological health of such impacted systems is vital for effective environmental management and conservation. However, in estuaries cumulatively impacted by both natural variability and human pressures, low macrobenthic abundances and azoic conditions often fail to meet the data thresholds required for conventional taxonomic indices, limiting their reliability. To address these constraints, this study applied a Functional Feeding Guild (FFG) approach alongside the Evenness Feeding Diversity Index (jFD), to evaluate the ecological status of the heavily polluted Patalganga estuary over four years. Subsurface deposit feeders (SSDF), primarily pollution-tolerant oligochaetes, prevailed in highly degraded zones. Both natural (salinity) and anthropogenic (PHcsed) stressors emerged as key drivers of community and feeding guild distribution. The jFD effectively identified poor ecological quality in the upper estuary and moderate conditions in the lower zones, demonstrating the utility of functional indices in assessing systems subject to strong anthropogenic stress. The results underscore the value of integrating functional and structural indicators with multivariate analyses for accurate ecological assessments, especially in data-limited environments, and emphasize the importance of further research on functional traits to refine ecological quality evaluations and management strategies
Collections
- Scholarly literature [9282]

