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Density declines, richness increases, and composition shifts in stream macroinvertebrates
Citation:
Rumschlag, S., M. Mahon, D. Jones, W. Battaglin, J. Behrens, E. Bernhardt, P. Bradley, E. Brown, F. De Laender, R. Hill, S. Kunz, S. Lee, E. Rosi, R. Schafer, T. Schmidt, M. Simonin, K. Smalling, K. Voss, AND J. Rohr. Density declines, richness increases, and composition shifts in stream macroinvertebrates. Science Advances. American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Washington, DC, 9(18):eadf4896, (2023). https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf4896
Impact/Purpose:
Documenting trends of stream macroinvertebrate biodiversity is challenging because biomonitoring often has limited spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scopes. The National Aquatic Resource Surveys (NARS) is a major national program aimed at understanding the state of the nation’s waters. NARS provides critical data of unparalleled scope that is capable of addressing this gap. We joined data from NARS and USGS BioData to document trends in stream macroinvertebrate communities over 30 years across the contiguous U.S. We found total densities of macroinvertebrates have decreased by 11% over 27 years. In addition, differences between urban and agricultural versus relatively pristine streams have increased over time. Urban and agricultural streams lost the few disturbance-sensitive taxa they once had and gained disturbance-tolerant taxa. These results suggests that current efforts to protect and restore streams are not sufficient to mitigate anthropogenic effects.
Description:
Documenting trends of stream macroinvertebrate biodiversity is challenging because biomonitoring often has limited spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scopes. We analyzed biodiversity and composition of assemblages of >500 genera, spanning 27 years, and 6131 stream sites across forested, grassland, urban, and agricultural land uses throughout the United States. In this dataset, macroinvertebrate density declined by 11% and richness increased by 12.2%, and insect density and richness declined by 23.3 and 6.8%, respectively, over 27 years. In addition, differences in richness and composition between urban and agricultural versus forested and grassland streams have increased over time. Urban and agricultural streams lost the few disturbance-sensitive taxa they once had and gained disturbance-tolerant taxa. These results suggest that current efforts to protect and restore streams are not sufficient to mitigate anthropogenic effects.
URLs/Downloads:
DOI: Density declines, richness increases, and composition shifts in stream macroinvertebrates
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37134169/