Jyoti Rai, Department of Biology, University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL 36688. Email: [email protected]. Sediment samples from three sites along Halls Creek were collected for inspection of benthic invertebrates. Sediments were collected from two opposite shores. Two samples were collected from each site. Halls Mill Creek, so far a healthy stream, is being degraded slowly by increase...

A major goal of community ecology is understanding the processes responsible for generating biodiversity patterns along spatial and environmental gradients. In stream ecosystems, system-specific conceptual frameworks have dominated research describing change longitudinal gradients river networks. However, support these has been mixed, mainly applicable to specific ecosystems biomes, placed less...

Stream–riparian areas represent a nexus of biodiversity, with disproportionate numbers of species tied to and interacting within this key habitat. New research in Pacific Northwest headwater forests, especially the characterization of microclimates and amphibian distributions, is expanding our perspective of riparian zones, and suggests the need for alternative designs to manage stream–riparian...

1. Stream ecosystems are increasingly impacted by multiple stressors that lead to a loss of sensitive species and an overall reduction in diversity. A dominant paradigm in ecological restoration is that increasing habitat heterogeneity (HH) promotes restoration of biodiversity. This paradigm is reflected in stream restoration projects through the common practice of re-configuring channels to ad...

Knowledge of current and historical conditions is needed to guide conservation and restoration policies, but such information is lacking for most taxa. This problem is especially severe for small, inconspicuous taxa, such as the thousands of invertebrate species that inhabit stream and other freshwater ecosystems. We describe a novel application of River Invertebrate Prediction and Classificati...

Recent studies highlight linkages among the architecture of ecological networks, their persistence facing environmental disturbance, and the related patterns of biodiversity. A hitherto unresolved question is whether the structure of the landscape inhabited by organisms leaves an imprint on their ecological networks. We analyzed, based on pyrosequencing profiling of the biofilm communities in 1...

Land use is known to alter the nature of land-water interactions, but the potential effects of widespread forest management on headwaters in boreal regions remain poorly understood. We evaluated the importance of catchment land use, land cover, and local stream variables for macroinvertebrate community and functional trait diversity in 18 boreal headwater streams. Variation in macroinvertebrate...