Disentangling the effect of climatic and hydrological predictor variables on benthic macroinvertebrate distributions from predictive models

Abstract Lotic freshwater macroinvertebrate species distribution models (SDMs) have been shown to improve when hydrological variables are included. However, most studies date only include data describing climate or stream flow-related surrogates. We assessed the relative influence of climatic and predictor on modelled macroinvertebrates, expecting model performance calibrated five SDMs using combinations bioclimatic (bC), (H) hydroclimatic (hC) datasets compared as well variance partition all combinations. investigated difference in trait composition communities that responded better either bC H configurations. The dataset had terms proportional variance, however was increased with addition hC H. Trait demonstrated distinct patterns between associated configurations, where prefer intermediate slow-flowing current conditions regions further downstream performed bC–H. Including contributes improved performance, it is however, species-specific future would benefit from hydrology-related link environmental diverse communities. Consequently, could more accurately guide sustainable river ecosystem management.