TY - JOUR
T1 - Density declines, richness increases, and composition shifts in stream macroinvertebrates
AU - Rumschlag, Samantha
AU - Mahon, Michael
AU - Jones, Devin
AU - Battaglin, William
AU - Behrens, Jonny
AU - Bernhardt, Emily
AU - Bradley, Paul
AU - Brown, Ethan
AU - De Laender, Frederik
AU - Hill, Ryan
AU - Kunz, Stefan
AU - Lee, Sylvia
AU - Rosi, Emma
AU - Schäfer, Ralf
AU - Schmidt, Travis
AU - Simonin, Marie
AU - Smalling, Kelly
AU - Voss, Kristofor
AU - Rohr, Jason R.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was conducted as part of the Analyses of Contaminant Effects in Freshwater Systems: Synthesizing Abiotic and Biotic Stream Datasets for Long-Term Ecological Research Working Group supported by the John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis, funded by the U.S. Geological Survey.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85159545700&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1126/sciadv.adf4896
DO - 10.1126/sciadv.adf4896
M3 - Article
SN - 2375-2548
VL - 9
JO - Science Advances
JF - Science Advances
IS - 18
M1 - eadf4896
ER -
