Introduction to the Food Web Symposium: Bringing Food Web Ecology to Fish Habitat Monitoring Programs

This presentation describes the impetus for the “Moving Beyond Water Quality Indices: How Can Macroinvertebrate Data from Fish Habitat Monitoring Programs Inform Food Web Analyses?” symposium. A Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership (PNAMP) work group comprised of participants from federal, state, local, and tribal agencies and private consultants has been working on standardization of aquatic macroinvertebrate protocols and data sharing since 2007. At an Oregon Chapter AFS meeting in 2013, we addressed how benthic and drift macroinvertebrate data can be better employed to describe fish habitat quality. Speakers described useful approaches such as indices of biotic integrity (IBIs), observed/expected approaches (e.g., RIVPACS), and composition of ecological guilds (e.g., functional feeding groups). However, a strong recommendation from the symposium was to forge direct linkages between aquatic macroinvertebrates and fish productivity. The current symposium explores this topic by convening experts in food web ecology, especially those employing benthic and/or drift aquatic invertebrate data, to describe the food base for fish. Our goal is to bring relevant concepts from food web ecology to land managers, restoration practitioners, or other non-food web ecologists who desire to integrate food webs into their research or monitoring programs.