Long‐term studies of freshwater macroinvertebrates: a review of the frequency, duration and ecological significance

Abstract

1. The importance of a long-term ecological perspective is well documented, yet the availability of long-term data remains limited. This paper highlights the value of long-term ecological studies of freshwater macroinvertebrates by reviewing both the availability of long-term data and recent ecological contributions based on them. 2. A survey of recent literature on stream macroinvertebrates identified 46 papers published between 1987 and 2004 that included long-term (i.e. ‡5 years) data. Most recently published long-term studies of stream macroinvertebrates began collecting data in the 1970s and 1980s and their duration (time between first and last year sampled) was relatively brief (median ¼ 9 years, maximum ¼ 96 years). Most studies did not expand their temporal perspective by incorporating older data collected by other researchers. 3. Recent long-term studies of macroinvertebrates have made major contributions to our understanding of interannual variation and cycles, complex abiotic and biotic interactions, and natural and anthropogenic disturbance and recovery. Without these studies, we would know much less about the magnitude of natural temporal variation, the importance of physical and biological disturbance and interactions, the role of pathogens and introduced species, the overall impact of pollution and the effectiveness of protection and remediation efforts. 4. If we are to encourage long-term perspectives in our science, we need to facilitate the transfer of individual studies, as well as knowledge and data, among scientists. This includes efforts to archive and annotate data more effectively, so that they can be more easily incorporated into future research.

Macroinvertebrate community response to inter‐annual and regional river flow regime dynamics

“…Long-term hydroclimatological time-series can provide a benchmark against which recent and predicted future changes (natural or anthropogenic) may be gauged (Marsh et al, 2007). However, in contrast to the hydrological sciences, there are few long-term ecological time-series for riverine ecosystems (Jackson andFűreder, 2006, Monk et al, 2006;Reid and Ogden 2006). The vast majority of ecological time-series are limited in duration, perhaps reflecting the resource intensive nature of generating specieslevel ecological data (Holmes 2006).…”

Comparative Assessment of Climate Change Scenarios Based on Aquatic Food Web Modeling

“…Long-term changes of many copepod species and other zooplankton groups have been also found to be related with changes in temperature and salinity [2,21,37]. According to [15], climatic conditions can influence interannual variation in macroinvertebrate populations, whereas cyclical patterns can be an expression of other factors.…”

Long-term trends in aquatic ecosystem bioassessment metrics are not influenced by sampling method: empirical evidence from the Niobrara River

“…Relatively few long-term aquatic invertebrate monitoring data sets exist, and the few that do are vital to our collective understanding of how ecosystems change over time, particularly in response to specific events (Jackson and Füreder, 2006;Jackson et al, 2009;Mazor et al, 2009). In this study, four of six bioassessment metrics (HBI, EPT richness, taxa richness and the proportion of EPT taxa) showed significant trends over the 19-year monitoring period, regardless of which data set (HD or Hess) was included for the 2010-2014 timeframe.…”