Aquatic Insect Community Structure in an Acidic and a Circumneutral Stream in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia

We conducted a one-year study of benthic macroinvertebrate communities on McGee Run and Files Creek, two second-order streams in eastern West Virginia. McGee Run has been affected by acidic precipitation and has a mean pH of 4.5. Files Creek lies in a buffered catchment and has a mean pH of 6.7. Nine samples were taken from riffle areas in each stream using an invertebrate box sampler during the four seasons. The benthic insect community of McGee Run was depressed in terms of richness compared with that of Files Creek, but density did not vary significantly between the two streams. Plecoptera and the shredder functional group dominated the community of acidic McGee Run, whereas Files Creek had a more even distribution of taxa and functional feeding groups.