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etween reaches. All multivariate analyses were conducted in PRIMER (Version 6, Plymouth
Marine Labs, Plymouth UK; Clarke & Warwick, 2001).
The results from this study were combined with studies from three other cave streams in
northeastern Alabama (Huntsman et al. 2011, Chapter 5) and long-term data from forested
headwater streams at Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory Southern Research Station (C53, C54, C55)
with- and without-litter exclusion experiment (Wallace et al. 1999, Cross et al. 2006, Meyer et al.,
1998) to examine for correlations between organic matter storage and macroinvertebrate biomass.
The results from the surface and cave stream studies are comparable because of their similarities in:
i) key environmental characteristics (e.g., low amount of primary production in the forested
headwater streams Webster et al. 1983, Lowe et al. 1986, Mulholland et al. 1997; Wallace et al.
1999), ii) sampling regimes, and iii) biogeographic regions, which indicates that the the pool of
surface species that colonized the streams come from a similar species-pools. This data set was
analyzed in Data Desk version 6.1 (Data Description Inc., 1996) using simple linear regression. Data
were transformed as needed.
Results
Water temperature and nutrients
Average daily water temperature during the study was 13.5 ° C and varied ±2 ° C. Soluble
reactive phosphorus (8-10 µg L -1 ) and NH + 4 -N (4-5 µg L -1 ) were similar and low in both study
reaches pre- and post-litter amendment (Table 1). Average NO 3¯-N was similar between reaches
pre-litter amendment (258-268 µg L -1 ), but was lower in the manipulation reach following the
litter amendment (193 µg L -1 ).
Organic matter
Mean monthly standing crop organic matter was low in both study reaches prior to the
litter amendment, ranging from 9 to 136 g AFDM m -2 . Following the litter amendment, standing
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