Have stream invertebrate communities of Macquarie Island changed over 15 years and are they likely to respond to climate changes or other environmental factors?

This project will assess the extent of changes to the freshwater stream invertebrate communities of Macquarie Island since they were last sampled 15 years ago. It will also assess whether spatial variation in these stream communities is related to changes in water temperature, it will experimentally examine the temperature tolerance of these freshwater taxa and will provide a long-term dataset to assess future changes, including those resulting from climate change.

The use of stream macroinvertebrates as biomonitoring tools to detect impacts from human activities on Macquarie Island and other sub-Antarctic Islands will be examined. The download file contains a pdf document with several side-by-side comparison images taken in 1992 by Richard Marchant during his studies for ASAC project 555 (ASAC_555), "A Survey of the Freshwater Macroinvertebrates in Streams and Lakes of Macquarie Island", and in 2010 by James Doube.