| Abstract: Biological assessments that use the reference condition approach are based on the concept of comparing a site's observed biology to sites where disturbance is minimal or absent. However, in many regions of the world, such areas are scarce or nonexistent. In this study, an alternative approach proposed by Chessman and Royal for bioassessment without reference areas based on environmental filters was tested in Brazil. This approach assumes that key environmental features act in the selection of potential colonists, from a regional pool of taxa, based on the ecological traits (tolerances) possessed by each taxon. We developed the approach by: 1) determining the regional pool, based on a large Atlantic Forest biome database; 2) selecting... |
