Functional approaches in stream eco

Functional approaches in stream ecology have been used for a long time (e.g., Townsend &Hildrew, 1994) and have been applied in biomonitoring with success (see Dole´dec & Statzner, 2010 and Statzner & Beche 2010 for reviews about the use of functional approach
in biomonitoring). Besides this tradition, little attention has been given to integrate biomonitoring protocols and functional approaches. Most studies have focused in comparing taxonomic approaches against functional approaches, and in finding the relationship between trait states and environmental filters (Dole´dec & Statzner, 2010; but see Feio & Dole´dec, 2012 in attempting to integrate functional diversity and predictive models). Here, we gave an example on how traditional tools, as multi metric indices, can be improved and complemented by inserting functional diversity metrics.