Citizen science is increasingly used to document biodiversity in urban ecosystems while simultaneously promoting public engagement with nature. However, how institutional coordination relates to participation levels and the resulting representation of urban biodiversity remains poorly understood, particularly in European cities. The City Nature Challenge is a global annual bioblitz that engages citizens in recording urban biod...

Floods are usually recognized as a natural disturbance of lotic ecosystems shaping riverine communities. Although benthic macroinvertebrates display morphological and behavioural adaptations to cope with flood-related conditions, the diversity and density of these organisms are generally reduced after a flood. Understanding the mechanisms and timing of the post-flood recovery of macroinvertebrate communities assumes a key impo...

Excessive fine sediment deposition is a global pervasive issue in rivers and, in particular, for benthic organisms including macroinvertebrates. However, the assessment of fine sediment effects on the taxonomic and functional diversity of macroinvertebrate communities is challenging because of context-dependent confounding factors, such as river-flow conditions, land-use change, and anthropogenic pressures. By using a set of o...

Aim Biomass is an important descriptor of macroinvertebrate communities, providing insights into stream productivity and ecosystem functioning. Nevertheless, the drivers of biomass are still poorly assessed, especially in multiscale studies. Here, we aimed at filling this gap by assessing the relationship between environmental variables measured at patch, reach and basin scale and macroinvertebrate biomass, as well as the tran...

Rivers are heterogeneous and patchy-structured systems in which regional biodiversity of aquatic communities typically varies as a function of local habitat conditions and spatial gradients. Understanding which environmental and spatial constraints shape the diversity and composition of benthic communities is therefore a pivotal challenge for basic and applied research in river ecology. In this study, benthic invertebrates wer...

Several Alpine streams are currently facing recurrent summer drying events with detrimental consequences on stream detritivores, i.e., shredders, due to negative effects via changes the organic matter (CPOM) availability. We examined the ecological requirements of three phylogenetically related shredder genera belonging to the family of Nemouridae (Plecoptera), namely Nemoura , Protonemura and Amphinemura , in 14 Alpine stream...