%0 Journal Article
%T Evaluation of Environmental Factors to Determine the Distribution of Functional Feeding Groups of Benthic Macroinvertebrates Using an Artificial Neural Network
%A Park
%A Young-Seuk
%A Sovan Lek
%A Tae-Soo Chon
%A Piet F.M. Verdonschot
%J Journal of Ecology and Field Biology
%D 2008
%I 
%X Functional feeding groups (FFGs) of benthic macroinvertebrates are guilds of invertebrate taxa thatobtain food in similar ways, regardless of their taxonomic affinities. They can represent a heterogeneous assemblageof benthic fauna and may indicate disturbances of their habitats. The proportion of different groups canchange in response to disturbances that affect the food base of the system, thereby offering a means of assessingdisruption of ecosystem functioning. In this study, we used benthic macroinvertebrate communities collectedat 650 sites of 23 different water types in the province of Overijssel, The Netherlands. Physical and chemicalenvironmental factors were measured at each sampling site. Each taxon was assigned to its corresponding FFGbased on its food resources. A multilayer perceptron (MLP) using a backpropagation algorithm, a supervised artificialneural network, was applied to evaluate the influence of environmental variables to the FFGs of benthicmacroinvertebrates through a sensitivity analysis. In the evaluation of input variables, the sensitivity analysis withpartial derivatives demonstrates the relative importance of influential environmental variables on the FFG,showing that different variables influence the FFG in various ways. Collector-filterers and shredders were mainlyinfluenced by Ca2+ and width of the streams, and scrapers were influenced mostly with Ca2+ and depth, andpredators were by depth and pH. Ca2+ and depth displayed relatively high influence on all four FFGs, while somevariables such as pH, %gravel, %silt, and %bank affected specific groups. This approach can help to characterizecommunity structure and to ecologically assess target ecosystems.
%K Artificial neural network
%K Benthic macroinvertebrates
%K Contribution evaluation
%K Functional feeding groups
%K Prediction
%K Sensitivity analysis
%U http://ocean.kisti.re.kr/is/mv/showPDF_ocean.jsp?method=download&pYear=2008&koi=KISTI1.1003%2FJNL.JAKO200800557080360&sp=233&CN1=JAKO200800557080360&poid=kesk&kojic=STHHCL&sVnc=v31n3&sFree=