Invertebrates in created and restored wetlands

Abstract

Wetland creation and restoration has increased drastically during the last four decades owing to a combination of reasons, including mitigation banking, pollutant retention, biodiversity conservation, and recreation. These ecosystems are often intensely managed and invertebrate controls are highly specific to each wetland type. They offer unique opportunities to test ecological theory, particularly succession and community assembly. On the applied side, research in these systems has focused on the use of invertebrates as indicators of ecological conditions, and on the potential and limits of multifunctionality (e.g., nutrient retention and biodiversity conservation). The development or recovery of wetland structure and functioning is highly context-dependent and currently limited, and invertebrate successional trajectories are difficult to anticipate. Nevertheless, created and restored wetlands may positively contribute to sustaining invertebrate metapopulations and metacommunities by increasing the density of waterbodies available at the landscape scale.