Perspectives in Running Water Ecology

The discipline of stream ecology has grown exponentially along with most other areas of science in the last three decades. The field has changed from a fish management-dominated poor-sister of limnology to a discipline with theoretical constructs and ecological insights as rich as those in any area of ecology. A focus on energy transformations, nutrient turnover and the storage and processing of organic substrates has greatly enhanced the development of current paradigms. For example, the data base on microbial-biochemical invertebrate interactions in streams is now very extensive. A survey of the stream ecology literature reveals the central role played by H.B. Noel Hynes, whom I believe to be the world's premier lotic ecologist. Professor Hynes produced the major text in the field ("The Ecology of Running Waters") which has served both as an integrative review and as a bridge between the fish-water quality orientation of the fifties and sixties to the process oriented, nutritional resource-watershed perspectives of the seventies. It should also be noted that Professor Hynes' book, "The Biology of Polluted Waters", served as a basic reference for the earlier period and he has published over 150 research papers, the great majority in stream ecology, spanning four decades.