Body size is a key trait in ecology due to its influence on metabolism and many other life‐history traits that affect population and community responses to environmental variation as well as ecosystem properties. The size spectrum represents the relationship between abundance (or biomass) and body size, independent of species identity. Size spectrum parameters, such as the slope or intercept, have been applied extensively as i...

Riparian plants provide an important source of energy for freshwater food webs through inputs of leaf litter. Planting riparian buffers with mixed species could enhance the detrital resource supply for invertebrates through varied leaf breakdown rates. To quantify leaf breakdown rates and invertebrate colonisation, we used leaves from eleven grass, shrub and tree species common along agricultural waterways in New Zealand. Brea...

Rivers suffer from multiple stressors acting simultaneously on their biota, but the consequences are poorly quantified at the global scale. We evaluated the biological condition of rivers globally, including the largest proportion of countries from the Global South published to date. We gathered macroinvertebrate‐ and fish‐based assessments from 72,275 and 37,676 sites, respectively, from 64 study regions across six continents...

Introduced aquatic macrophytes can dominate small agricultural waterways in summer and autumn becoming a significant management problem. Excessive growth can clog waterways, causing drainage issues and reducing agricultural productivity while in‐stream velocities are reduced and sedimentation increased. Consequently, water managers remove them by mechanical clearance, chemical spray and cutting which can be costly and have neg...

Understanding what makes food webs stable has long been a goal of ecologists. Topological structure and the distribution and magnitude of interaction strengths in food webs have been shown to confer important stabilizing properties. However, our understanding of how variable species interactions affect food‐web structure and stability is still in its infancy. Anthropogenic stress, such as acid mine drainage, is likely to place...

Recent studies have suggested that poikilothermic animals, such as fish, may represent a previously overlooked source of the faecal indicator bacteria (FIB) used for the assessment of water quality. However, quantitative studies of FIB in poikilotherms are scarce. We investigated the presence of FIB in the faeces of five freshwater fish species. E. coli and enterococci were detected in 71 and 76% of faecal samples, respectivel...

Excessive macrophytes can cause significant problems in agricultural waterways requiring active management. Conventional control techniques can have a range of adverse effects. We investigated several control tools in two experiments: firstly, we tested eight treatments at a small‐scale (2 m × 2 m). We found intensive hand weeding, weed mat and herbicide spraying to be effective treatments, reducing macrophyte cover to

Arsenic, often found in gold deposits, can enter aquatic systems. The toxicity of arsenate (As(V)), the most common valence state of arsenic in freshwater, was assessed on the larvae of four freshwater insect taxa from naturally acidic (pH 5.9) and circumneutral (pH 7.4) New Zealand streams. Insects from the acidic stream were more sensitive to arsenate‐spiked water than those from the circumneutral stream. Early instars ( Del...

Canterbury mudfish ( Neochanna burrowsius ) are endemic to a small region of Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand and classified as nationally endangered. We reviewed data from the New Zealand Freshwater Fish Database and trapped fish in July 2006, and January and February 2007 in the Waianiwaniwa Valley, Canterbury to determine the importance of this catchment for mudfish conservation. Mudfish were found in 19 of the 28 site...

At the catchment scale, braided rivers are recognised as physically unstable, dynamic landscapes, yet at finer spatial scales they are a mosaic of micro‐habitats including physically unstable braided channels and more stable spring‐sources, spring creeks, and groundwater zones. We investigated benthic invertebrate communities at 103 sites in braided channels, springs and hillslope streams in the Waimakariri River, New Zealand...

Okeover Stream, on the University of Canterbury campus in Christchurch, New Zealand, has been the subject of restoration efforts since 1998. Our study focused on quantifying the response of this urban stream to current restoration efforts. Initially, physico‐chemical conditions and biological communities at three sites along the Okeover Stream were compared with three physically similar sites on each of nearby Waimairi Stream...