What's in a site? Variation in lotic macroinvertebrate density and diversity in a spatially replicated experiment

Abstract

Few studies have tested whether a small-scale, experimental difference in biotic density and diversity detected at one site has any predictive capacity at other locations, nor whether such experimental differences are significant relative to overall spatial variation. In this study, we tested textural differences between substrata-previously shown to be critical to macroinvertebrate density and diversity at one site on the Steavenson River in southeastern Australia-and replicated the experiment at this site and at two others on the same river, plus at three sites on each of two other rivers (the Acheron and Little Rivers) in the same catchment. Nine rough and nine smooth colonization substra..