Poster Presentation Society for Freshwater Science 2026 Annual Meeting

INVURTS & NEON: Macroscale vs local effects on stream macroinvertebrate community composition (135903)

Elizabeth B Sudduth 1 , Sandra Cooke 2 , Darrin Hunt 3 , Sarah J Snyder 4 , Amy Hill 5 , Melissa DeSiervo 6 , Kristine Hopfensperger 7 , Shannon O'Leary 8 , Patricia Saunders 9
  1. Georgia Gwinnett College, Lawrenceville, GA, United States
  2. Greensboro College, Greensboro, NC, USA
  3. Shenandoah University, Winchester, VA, USA
  4. Bard College at Simon's Rock , Great Barrington, MA, USA
  5. Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC, USA
  6. Union College, Schenectady, NY, USA
  7. Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY, USA
  8. St. Anselm College, Manchester, NH, USA
  9. Ashland University, Ashland, OH, USA

The INVURTS project (Investigations with NEON: variability of macroinvertebrates versus urban and rural temperature dynamics) is looking at similarities and differences among stream macroinvertebrate communities at the continental scale and how those are related to stream temperature variability and thermal regime. The National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) provides a wealth of data from less impacted sites throughout the US. Here, we focus on macroinvertebrate community similarity to investigate the effects of ecoregion (NEON Domain) and of watershed urbanization on similarities among communities. Using multivariate methods, we compared data from less impacted sites (NEON sites) and from sites with more watershed development (preliminary data from INVURTS sites). We hypothesized that communities within ecoregions (NEON domains) will generally be more similar to each other, but that more urban sites lose this ecoregion effect and become more similar to each other regardless of ecoregion due to the homogenizing effects of urbanization. 

In general, the expected pattern was observed. Among the less impacted sites, some ecoregions, including the Northeast (NEON Domain 1), Mid Atlantic (2), and Appalachians & Cumberland Plateau (7), had very similar macroinvertebrate communities, whereas others, including the Southern Plains (11), Prairie Peninsula (6), and Ozarks Complex (8) had more distinctive assemblages. In our preliminary INVURTS dataset, the more developed INVURTS sites happened to be in the Mid Atlantic, and they were similar in community composition to the less impacted NEON sites in the Eastern USA (1, 2, and 7). However, when comparing within the Eastern USA region only, the more impacted Mid-Atlantic INVURTS sites did seem to be more similar to each other than to other sites in the Eastern USA, suggesting homogenization from urbanization could be occurring. These results somewhat support our hypotheses, but more data, especially from more developed sites in other ecoregions across the USA, will be illuminating. Future investigations will look more directly at the role of temperature variability in shaping the ecoregion and urbanization patterns.