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Keywords

intermittent, barriers, streams, macroinvertebrates

Abstract

Benthic aquatic macroinvertebrates are some of the most highly used organisms for biomonitoring and assessing stream health. However, biomonitoring is often done in one season, potentially missing important taxa and inaccurately reflecting the community as well as stream health. In addition, while road crossing effects have also been extensively researched the last few decades, these studies are also often conducted in one season, likely misrepresenting the community structure and the overall effects of the road crossing. The highly known River Continuum Concept (RCC) is often applied to these benthic aquatic macroinvertebrate communities. This study aimed to examine aquatic macroinvertebrate communities across a temporal scale as well as spatial scale in the form of in-stream barriers. Sampling took place seasonally above and below two barriers and organisms were identified to family. We compared macroinvertebrate communities using standard diversity indices: Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera (EPT) abundance and relative abundance, order and family richness, Simpson’s Evenness, and Chironomidae abundance and relative abundance. Additionally, orders and environmental variables were plotted using Non-Metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS). Family richness and EPT relative abundance were the highest in the spring season, while Chironomidae relative abundance was highest in the summer. Temperature was a significant driver in the macroinvertebrate community composition, highlighting the importance of seasonal biomonitoring. Overall, diversity varied across a temporal and spatial scale, suggesting that the inclusion of seasonal sampling would be beneficial to both biomonitoring efforts and road crossing assessments.

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