Freshwater macroinvertebrate diversity and ecology

Freshwater macroinvertebrates — the insects, worms, crustaceans, and mollusks visible to the naked eye that live in streams and rivers — serve as both key drivers of ecosystem processes like decomposition and nutrient cycling and as sensitive indicators of water quality. Because these communities respond measurably to changes in surrounding land use, pollution, and flow regimes, ecologists use them to assess the health of aquatic systems and to evaluate whether restoration efforts are working. Ongoing research is working to untangle how multiple stressors — agricultural runoff, urban expansion, drought, and climate warming — interact to reshape community composition, and how regional processes like dispersal connect local populations across landscapes. A central challenge is defining meaningful reference conditions against which degraded systems can be compared, especially as climate change shifts what "natural" looks like in the first place.

Works

175,960

Total citations

679,546

Keywords

Stream EcosystemsLand UseFreshwater BiodiversityAquatic InsectsEcosystem FunctioningRiver Restoration