Macroinvertebrate along Vestari-Jökulsá Iceland

1. Background: The impact of climate change on the longitudinal distribution of macroinvertebrates in glacier‐fed streams has been the subject of increasing awareness in recent years. Despite prior intensive research on the longitudinal distribution of macroinvertebrates in glacier-fed ecosystems, long-term studies in glacier-fed rivers of arctic regions, that investigate the temporal change of macroinvertebrate communities during periods of rapid climate change, are largely missing, although climate change is expected to cause large shifts in arctic ecosystems. Especially in the arctic rivers of Iceland, where the aquatic macroinvertebrate fauna is very poor in species, and glacier-fed rivers have the lowest density and diversity of benthic invertebrates of all river groups, the response of benthic macroinvertebrates to future environmental change may differ distinctly from those in low-latitude climate regions. Here we present the results of a pilot study investigating the changes of ...