The global scientific literature on applications and trends in the use of functional morphological groups in phytoplankton studies

Abstract

The application of deconstructive approaches in aquatic ecology has been increasing recently. Especially for phytoplankton, some functional classifications summarize similar traits of a group of species to understand organisms’ response to landscape variability. One of these approaches deals with phytoplankton functional classification based on morphology (MBFG - Morphologically Based Functional Groups). Focusing on this approach, we systematic mapping the scientific literature to reveal this functional framework´s applications for freshwater phytoplankton. Methods: For this study, we selected from the Thomson ISI Web of Science database all articles published between 2010 and 2018 dealing with MBFG. We recorded 179 manuscripts citing the phytoplankton functional classification based on morphology and, among them, we excluded three due to lack of access to information. Results: A clear temporal trend occurred with an increase in citations involving the morphological approach, with Brazil, Uruguay, and China as the countries with the highest number of studies. Of the total records, 60 manuscripts applied morphological classification in their studies, of which 23 manuscripts comprised comparative studies with other functional approaches. Most applications were for phytoplankton in lakes, with biomass being the most used metric for framing taxa in MBFG. The most often recorded groups are MBFG IV (medium-sized organisms without specialization), VII (large mucilaginous colonies), and III (large filamentous organisms with aerotopes). Conclusion: This study showed an increasing trend in the number of studies that used the functional approach based on MBFG. We believe that deconstructive approaches, such as MBFG, help assess issues of interest in phytoplankton ecology.