Changes in invertebrate community composition allow for consistent interpretation of biodiversity loss in ecological status assessment

Biological communities change in response to human alteration. The response of individual taxa and the community can be used to establish preventive criteria to halt further biodiversity deterioration. Here we explore how consistent are the boundaries between Good and Moderate ecological status derived from classification systems used in North-NW Spain: NORThern Spain Indicators system (NORTI), River type specific multimetric (METI) and Iberian Biomonitoring Working Party (IBMWP), by using common interpretation of normative definitions of Water Framework Directive. We applied the three classifications to a monitoring dataset of Nalon River basin, comprising samples from different stream types and reference conditions. We applied Threshold Indicator Taxa ANalysis to the invertebrate community along the most relevant environmental pressures and biological impairment gradients represented by the Ecological Quality Ratio (EQR) scores of the classification systems. Only NORTI provided a true community ecological threshold and the change point (cp) 95% quantile (Q95%) range of 0.760 was assumed to be the boundary from Good to Moderate (G/M) status, used to standardize the number of taxa loss in all systems. Since the average number of taxa at reference sites was 34, the estimated loss of sensitive taxa was up to 97.1% in IBMWP, 73.5% in METI and 52.9% in NORTI when passing from Good to Moderate status, revealing very permissive boundaries. The loss of common sensitive taxa in NORTI at Q95% was used as G/M threshold and applied to the other classifications, resulting all in a common biodiversity loss of 21% of sensitive taxa richness at values of NORTI-EQR = 0.760, MET1- EQR 0.818 and IBMWP-EQR = 0.753. Results indicate that significant community changes along pressure gradients allow for establishing quantitative criteria consistent with normative definitions. This understanding derived from Directive monitoring programs can assess the risk that invertebrate communities face in terms of species loss derived from anthropogenic pressures. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.