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Refining Methods For Quantifying Macroinvertebrate Estimates Of Preference For Use In Stream Bioassessments, Ellen F. Wakeley Tomlinson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Two-thirds of United States stream length is in either fair or poor biological condition. However, we do not yet have reliable, quantitative tools to diagnose site-specific causes of biological impairment. One way to diagnose causes of impairment is to compare the environmental tolerances or preferences of the taxa expected at a site to those of the observed community. Stream ecologists have derived tolerance values (TVs) from field data for use in causal analysis, but inconsistencies across studies cast doubt on the accuracy of these TVs. Published TVs may not agree with one another for several reasons, including: differences in the …