Colonisation of wood by invertebrates in Australian upland streams: differences between pools and riffles

Summary

The invertebrate fauna of preconditioned wood that had been placed in the Acheron River, south-eastern Australia for 2, 5, 10, 20 and 30 days was compared with the fauna on natural logs. The colonisation experiments were conducted in both riffles and pools. Colonisation rates were lower than those found in previous Australian studies and colonisation was not complete after 30 days. The composition of the colonising fauna differed between logs in pools and those in riffles but there was no systematic difference between the experimental and natural log faunas. There was no difference in the rate of colonisation between logs in riffles and those in pools.