Work that initially started as a small semester project in 2011, thought to provide a better understanding of amphipod communities in streams around Lake Constance, now got published in BMC Ecology. I’m really happy that Florian Altermatt suggested this project when I started my Master’s studies and that his research group continued to work on the study system. The project introduced me to the world of amphipods and this is how I eventually became an amphipodologist.

In the paper, we report replicated patterns of community composition and spatial distributions in smaller tributary streams of Lake Constance. However, invading species had no clear effect on the genetic diversity of native amphipods on this small spatial scale. This suggests that large scale observations of invasion biology may not be directly reflected on a smaller scale.