1. Species of conservation concern are usually considered important elements in site prioritization for biodiversity conservation. To overcome the lack of information on species conservation status, multidimensional measures of species rarity can be used as proxies of species vulnerability.
2. Under this assumption, a two‐step protocol for site prioritization of aquatic groundwater‐dependent ecosystems is proposed using invertebrate vulnerability estimated from species' traits. In the first step, each species occurring in the sites of interest are scored according to their vulnerability. In the second step, sites are prioritized using species' scores.
3. Species vulnerability scores are based on five dimensions, for which various traits are scored: (i) geography, (ii) ecology, (iii) biology, (iv) population, and (v) evolutionary history. For each species, the scores of the various traits belonging to the same dimension are multiplied to obtain a synthetic score. These scores are then ranked into four classes and, for each dimension, each species receives a new score that reflects its rank. The sum of these scores represents the species' overall score.
4. Site conservation priorities are assessed by combining species scores into three indices: Sum of Species Scores, Biodiversity Conservation Concern (which relates the sum of species scores with the local species richness) and Groundwater Biodiversity Concern (which is the average of the former two). The protocol is illustrated using case studies in Italy and it is fully implemented in the software AQUALIFE which is freely available at: http://app.aqualifeproject.eu by registered users.
5. Sensitivity analyses showed that the protocol is robust against the lack of information on species biology or sampling limitations. However, trait scoring rests with the user, who must be familiar with the study group.
6. This approach can be applied at any spatial scale and to different types of aquatic groundwater‐dependent ecosystems.

中文翻译：

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评估依赖地下水的生态系统优先保护的新协议

1. 在保护生物多样性的地点优先次序中，通常将保护关切物种视为重要因素。为了克服缺乏有关物种保护状况的信息，可以将物种稀有性的多维度量用作物种脆弱性的代理。
2. 在此假设下，提出了一种利用根据物种特征估算的无脊椎动物脆弱性对水生地下水依赖性生态系统进行现场优先排序的两步协议。在第一步中，根据其脆弱性对出现在目标地点的每种物种进行评分。第二步，使用物种得分对地点进行优先排序。
3. 物种脆弱性评分基于五个维度，对它们的各种特征进行评分：（i）地理，（ii）生态，（iii）生物学，（iv）种群和（v）进化史。对于每个物种，将属于同一维度的各种性状的分数相乘以获得综合分数。然后将这些分数分为四类，对于每个维度，每个物种都会收到一个反映其排名的新分数。这些分数的总和表示该物种的总体分数。
4. 通过将物种评分分为三个指数来评估站点保护的优先级：物种总和评分，生物多样性保护关注（将物种评分的总和与当地物种丰富度联系起来）和地下水生物多样性关注（这是前两个平均值的平均值）。该协议以意大利的案例研究为例进行了说明，并且已在AQUALIFE软件中完全实现，该软件可以由注册用户免费获得：http：//app.aqualifeproject.eu。
5. 敏感性分析表明，该协议对于缺乏有关物种生物学或采样限制的信息是很可靠的。但是，特质评分取决于用户，该用户必须熟悉研究组。
6. 这种方法可以在任何空间尺度上应用到不同类型的依赖水生地下水的生态系统中。