45th Annual Rochester Academy of Sciences Fall Scientific Paper Session Presentation

Macroinvertebrates are aquatic invertebrates visible without a microscope, including insects, crustaceans, snails, and mollusks. They are important indicators of environmental health sensitive to ecological changes. While many studies examine macroinvertebrate communities at one location, there is a lack of synthesis across space and time.

So our objective was to study macroinvertebrate communities at a continental scale. We examined the abundance and diversity of freshwater macroinvertebrates in the phylums Arthropoda and Annelida using publicly available datasets in the United States from any time period. We compiled 2233 records of macroinvertebrate abundance from 1990 through 2018.

Using ecoinformatics methods and R statistical software, we modeled macroinvertebrate abundance and functional group community diversity. We tested their correlation with climate-sensitive variables including water temperature, as well as socio-ecological parameters including urbanization and water quality. Our results will help inform conservation of US freshwater macroinvertebrates in a changing climate.