TY - JOUR T1 - On the efficacy of restoration in stream networks: comments, critiques, and prospective recommendations JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/611939 SP - 611939 AU - David Murray-Stoker Y1 - 2019/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/11/29/611939.abstract N2 - Swan and Brown (2017) recently addressed the effects of restoration on stream communities under the meta-community framework. Using a combination of headwater and mainstem streams, Swan and Brown (2017) evaluated how position within a stream network affected the outcome of restoration on invertebrate communities. Ostensibly, their hypotheses were partially supported as restoration had stronger effects in headwater streams: invertebrate taxonomic richness was increased and temporal variability decreased in restored reaches; however, these results were not consistent upon closer scrutiny for both the original paper (Swan and Brown 2017) and the later erratum (Swan and Brown 2018). Here, I provide a secondary analysis of the data, with hypotheses and interpretations in the context of stream, metacommunity, and restoration ecology. I did not find any effects of restoration on local diversity, spatial dissimilarity, or temporal variability, let alone differential effects of restoration between headwaters and mainstems; these results are contrary Swan and Brown (2017, 2018), who reported that restoration increased taxonomic richness, increased spatial dissimilarity, and decreased temporal variability in restored headwater streams. I demonstrate further that the statistical tests conducted by Swan and Brown (2017, 2018) were invalid and, therefore, recommend the use of the results presented here. More broadly, I suggest that river and stream restoration will likely have greater success if a regional approach is taken to designing and implementing restoration projects. ER -