DOI: 10.5061/dryad.j3tx95xfg
title: Freshwater invertebrates characteristics data

description: The Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment (FADA) project estimated that
 freshwater animal species represent 9.5% of the 1.2 million species
 described. Knowing that freshwater represents only 0.01% of the
 earth's surface, these wetlands are suitable habitats for a great
 part of the world's total biodiversity. However, it has been shown
 that there is a lack of knowledge on these species, including freshwater
 invertebrates. Nevertheless, they play a key role in the majority of
 freshwater ecosystems and in their foodweb networks. Freshwater
 invertebrates are the food resource of many species such as fish and
 birds. The knowledge of their morphological, energetic and nutritive
 characteristics allows a better understanding of their selection by
 predators (size, energy intake, etc.), but also lead to improve of wetland
 management. Although information about freshwater invertebrates exists in
 the literature, they are generally heterogeneous, dispersed and difficult
 to collect. To facilitate the accessibility of these data and
 thus optimize and accelerate research projects including freshwater
 invertebrates, we propose a literature review describing 14 morphological
 and nutritive characteristics (size, dry weight, gross energy, crude
 protein, etc.) for 656 taxa of freshwater invertebrates. This dataset is
 review from 104 publications from 1935 to 2020, compiling 14
 characteristics when available (size, dry weight, gross energy, crude
 protein, etc.) for 656 taxa of freshwater invertebrates.
description: <strong>Steps of database
 building</strong> <strong>Classification and
 characteristics of freshwater
 invertebrates</strong><strong>:</strong> A literature
 review of the different morphological, calorific and nutritive
 characteristics of freshwater invertebrates was established. They were
 classified from phylum to species from three manuals of references
 (Balian et al. 2008, Thorp and
 Covich 2009, Thorp and Rogers 2011). In this review,
 104 scientific publications were used and 14 criteria were described:
 total length, head width or shell width, body length or shell length, wet
 weight, dry weight, gross energy of wet weight, gross energy of dry
 weight, gross energy of ash free dry weight, crude protein, crude lipid,
 crude fiber nitrogen free extract, proportion of ash and water.
 <strong>Referencing and
 retranscription of literature values:</strong> Publications
 presenting original data or non-published data from another study were
 cited. Within publications, the values of the different criteria were
 represented heterogeneously (e.g.<em> </em>different measure
 units, taxonomic level). Due to this heterogeneity, all values were
 transformed to obtain a homogeneous set of measurement units and taxonomic
 level (i.e. μm in mm, µg in mg, Kcal/g in cal/g, J/g in cal/g (1 J =
 0.239006 cal), KJ/g in cal/g). <strong>References</strong> Balian EV, Lévêque C, Segers H, Martens K (2008a) Freshwater animal diversity assessment. Edition 1. Springer Netherlands https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8259-7 • Balian EV, Segers H, Lévèque C, Martens K (2008b) The freshwater animal diversity assessment: an overview of the results. Hydrobiologia 595 (1): 627‑637. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s10750-007-9246-3 Thorp JH, Covich AP (2009) Ecology and classification of North American freshwater invertebrates. Third. Elsevier https://doi.org/10.1016/C2009-0-02669-5 Thorp JH, Rogers DC (2011) Field guide to freshwater invertebrates of North America. Elsevier https://doi.org/10.1016/C2009-0-61804-3
description: This dataset describes 14 characteristics (size, dry weight,
 gross energy, crude protein, etc.) for 656 taxa of freshwater
 invertebrates (File
 <em>:"D</em><em>atabase_invertebrates.txt"</em>). Headers corresponding to variable names are included as the first row in the data file. Each characteristic is subdivided into two categories, "value" corresponding to the value of the variable with sometimes a note corresponding to the comment associated with the value ("WS" for "with shell" and "SR" for "shell removed") and "reference" corresponding to the literature reference (File : "<em>Database_references.txt</em>").