Freshwater mussels (Unionida) are often found in patchily-distributed, dense communities called beds. Mussel beds frequently harbor larger, more diverse communities of other macroinvertebrates than mussel-poor benthos. While many studies provide explanations for why other macroinvertebrates benefit from occupying mussel beds, few have provided insight into the process of invertebrate community assembly. Furthermore, it is well-established that many macroinvertebrate species are highly mobile, for example, regularly engaging in downstream dispersal behavior called drifting, so occupancy of a mussel bed may be quite brief. In order to investigate the assembly process of mussel-bed occupants, we identified the dispersal modes of organisms collected from mussel beds of varying densities and species composition. During intensive mussel surveys of wadable streams in western New York, we collected macroinvertebrates, characterized substrate, and enumerated and identified all mussels present in randomly selected quadrats. Ex situ we identified macroinvertebrates to the lowest practical taxonomic level and used existing literature to assign dispersal capability and modes to all taxa. By doing so we can determine whether diverse bed communities are associated with patterns of dispersal tendencies in the resident taxa. Preliminary data show variation in community composition among quadrats with several taxa showing similar abundance across all samples and select taxa showing high abundance in only certain streams. In the future, we will monitor drifting macroinvertebrates in proximity to mussel beds and in relation to hydrological and physical habitat drivers with the goal of identifying causal relationships between macroinvertebrate community composition and aquatic taxa dispersal modes.