1. Climate change has been occurring at unprecedented rates and its impacts on biological populations is beginning to be well documented in the literature. For many species, however, long-term records are not available, and trends have not been documented.2. Using museum specimens from southern USA, we show that the stream-dwelling beetle Gyretes sinuatus has shown an 8% increase in body size and change in body shape (fineness ratio) from 1928 to 1988. Any directional morphological change observed over time could be an indicator of a microevolutionary response.3. During these 60 years, there have also been changes in temperature, precipitation, and location of collection sites. Unlike the global trend, mean annual temperature in the region has decreased, and furthermore, total annual precipitation has increased. By investigating how these various ecological and geographical variables may affect body size and shape, we can examine which pressures may promote larger and/or thinner beetles.4. Results indicate that mean annual temperature was the most predictive variable for the change in size and shape. We suggest there is an adaptive role for temperature on body size and shape of stream dwelling organisms. 5. We found that museum specimens can be invaluable resources of information when collection date and location information is available. We promote the use of such specimens for future studies of the morphological response to climate change.

Restoration has been acknowledged to be a major pathway by which humans can repair damaged ecosystems. Most of the work to date on terrestrial systems has focused on restoring plant communities, with an assumption that the conditions that lead to more diverse plant communities will also lead to a restoration of insect communities. This, however, has not been proven to be true. Here, we examine the recovery of terrestrial insect communities in naturally recovering and restored sites in response to severe historic pollution in the region of Sudbury, Ontario. We find that the insect communities have not recovered to the same degree as the plant communities. Furthermore, we present directions on how cross-taxa surrogacy can be useful to further aid the use of insects as indicators of restoration success.

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