Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print.
A major strength of the guild approach is its ability to simplify community analysis by aggregating species with similar roles or functions into groups. These groups can be used to study a number of important ecological concepts, including functional diversity, community response to disturbance, and food-web dynamics. Despite increased use, guild membership can be based on subjective criteria that are arbitrarily chosen, leading to inconsistencies across studies. Additionally, studies using the guild approach generally ignore ontogenetic changes in diet and habitat use and therefore do not fully capture the complexity of aquatic communities. Although these issues have been discussed in the literature, much has changed since the last review was published a decade ago. In our examination, we discuss data requirements and consequences of data availability and reliability on guild formation. We identify bootstrapping and permutation techniques developed to address limitations through cluster validation and the identification of ontogenetic shifts prior to guild delineation. Lastly, we provide a step-by-step guide to guild analysis, accompanied by a decision tree, to facilitate objective and informed guild creation.

中文翻译：

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将鱼类群落划分为生态分析行会：当前方法和未来方向的概述

加拿大渔业和水产科学杂志，提前印刷。
公会方法的一个主要优势是它能够通过将具有相似角色或功能的物种聚集成组来简化群落分析。这些群体可用于研究许多重要的生态概念，包括功能多样性、社区对干扰的反应和食物网动态。尽管使用增加，但公会成员资格可以基于任意选择的主观标准，从而导致研究之间的不一致。此外，使用行会方法的研究通常忽略饮食和栖息地使用的个体发生变化，因此不能完全捕捉水生群落的复杂性。尽管这些问题已在文献中讨论过，但自十年前发表上一篇综述以来发生了很大变化。在我们的考试中，我们讨论数据要求以及数据可用性和可靠性对公会形成的影响。我们通过集群验证和在公会划定之前识别个体遗​​传转变来确定引导和置换技术，以解决限制问题。最后，我们提供了公会分析的分步指南，并附有决策树，以促进客观和明智的公会创建。