Implications of oviposition site selection and habitat limitation for caddisfly populations in sand-bed streams

Abstract

This work has established that oviposition habitat can be limiting in streams, thus adding to a small body of work on this area, but also expanding the generality of this concept in lotic systems to include a different type of oviposition habitat. Bark is a substrate type that is likely to be more variably available than rocks because it degrades, is easily transported by floods, and goes through periods of loss and renewal on a yearly basis. Historically, freshwater researchers have tended to attribute high levels of patchiness observed in the distribution of aquatic insect larvae across multiple scales to factors acting on the larval stage such as supposed habitat requirements related to f..