Land degradation is a leading cause of biodiversity loss, and understanding its consequences on freshwater ecosystems remains a priority for improving the effectiveness of restoration practices and ecosystem assessments. Freshwater monitoring programs use macroinvertebrates to assess the biotic effects of degradation and management actions, often using the ratio of observed to expected taxa at a site—O/E—for this purpose. Despite the power of the O/E approach, large amounts of data are required to generate an expectation and it can be difficult to define a threshold value for degraded sites. An alternative assessment tool is phylogenetic diversity, which is widely used in academic biology but rarely applied in management despite empirical correlations between phylogenetic diversity and management targets such as ecosystem structure and function. Here, we use macroinvertebrate data from 1400 watersheds, collected since 1998, to evaluate the potential for phylogenetic metrics to inform evaluations of management practices. These watersheds were chosen because their low disturbance levels and high habitat heterogeneity have made them problematic to assess with O/E. Phylogenetic diversity detected degradation of assemblages and was sensitive enough to parse impacts to inform management actions. This is particularly notable given the phylogenetic metrics, unlike O/E, did not require additional “baseline” data. Site disturbance and broader environmental drivers strongly predicted site phylogenetic structure, providing management objectives to increase site quality. We call on others to consider using phylogenetic diversity to complement existing O/E schemes, particularly in systems where O/E is insufficient to prioritize management objectives.

中文翻译：

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系统发生学多样性能够有效，准确地将水生大型无脊椎动物群落的保护列为优先事项

土地退化是生物多样性丧失的主要原因，因此，了解其对淡水生态系统的影响仍然是提高恢复做法和生态系统评估的有效性的优先事项。淡水监测计划使用大型无脊椎动物来评估降解和管理措施的生物效应，为此通常使用在站点（O / E）处观察到的分类单元的比率。尽管O / E方法功能强大，但仍需要大量数据才能产生期望值，并且很难为退化站点定义阈值。另一种评估工具是系统发育多样性，尽管系统发育多样性与管理目标（如生态系统结构和功能）之间存在经验相关性，但它广泛用于学术生物学，但很少用于管理。在这里，我们使用1998年以来收集的1400个流域的大型无脊椎动物数据来评估系统发育指标的潜力，从而为管理实践的评估提供依据。选择这些流域是因为它们的低干扰水平和高栖息地异质性使其难以通过O / E进行评估。系统发育多样性检测到组合物的降解，并且足够灵敏以分析影响以告知管理行动。这是特别值得注意的，因为与O / E不同，系统发育指标不需要其他“基准”数据。场地干扰和更广泛的环境驱动因素强烈预测了场地的系统发育结构，为提高场地质量提供了管理目标。我们呼吁其他人考虑使用系统发育多样性来补充现有的O / E方案，