Using national scale data to quantify ecological subsidies and assess biological condition
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Fluxes of material and energy between adjacent ecosystems can have profound implications. Many insects undergo development in aquatic ecosystems and then metamorphose into winged-terrestrial adults. Upon entering the terrestrial ecosystem, these insects become a valuable food source for terrestrial consumers or contribute to nutrient pools as detritus. Several chapters from my dissertation focused on elucidating factors that could drive geographical variation in the quantity of insects emerging from rivers and streams of the contiguous United States. Among several potential factors, I demonstrated that components of stream network geometry can influence the configuration of aquatic insect deposition and that trait composition of stream macroinvertebrate assemblages could influence the duration and extent. Because stream network geometry and trait composition varies across large spatial scales, this could drive large scale patterns in linkages between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.