We examined how communities of macroinvertebrates occurring in functional process zones (FPZs) are affected by the location of FPZs in the river continuum. We delineated FPZs for three rivers displaying significant disparities in elevation, annual precipitation, valley shape, and other valley‐scale hydrogeomorphic variables. We extracted corresponding macroinvertebrate community data from the US National Water Quality Monitoring Council database and matched it to the stream order (SO) and FPZ delineations. We examined community structure in the three rivers by partitioning the variances associated with the FPZ and SO delineations. Then, we examined community variation as patterns of beta‐diversity for communities of FPZs in different SOs. In total, 23 FPZ‐SO configurations were examined. SO and FPZ delineations contributed similarly to the variance in the structure of macroinvertebrate communities. Taxa turnover accounted for the majority of the compositional change in communities of FPZs along the river continuum, while the functional composition showed primarily a nested structure. Pairwise comparison of communities for each FPZ along the river continuum showed that significant differences in community composition occurred at high SO in the three examined rivers. In this manuscript, we show that communities of FPZs are only partially comparable along the river continuum as significant compositional changes occur when comparing communities of FPZs in distant SOs. We bring, therefore, new elements to improve the interpretation of the River Ecosystem Synthesis concept that can have wider implications for understanding the biocomplexity of hydrogeomorphic patchiness in river networks.

中文翻译：

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河流连续体功能过程区大型无脊椎动物群落结构的变化：解释河流生态系统综合的新要素

我们研究了功能区（FPZs）中发生的大型无脊椎动物群落如何受到河流连续体中FPZs位置的影响。我们划定了三条河流的FPZ，这些河流在海拔，年降水量，河谷形状和其他河谷规模水文地貌变量方面存在显着差异。我们从美国国家水质监测委员会的数据库中提取了相应的大型无脊椎动物群落数据，并将其与河流顺序（SO）和FPZ轮廓进行了匹配。我们通过划分与FPZ和SO划定相关的方差来检查这三条河流中的群落结构。然后，我们研究了社区差异作为不同SO中FPZ社区的beta多样性模式。总共检查了23种FPZ-SO配置。SO和FPZ划定对大型无脊椎动物群落结构的变化具有相似的贡献。在沿河连续带的FPZs群落的组成变化中，分类单元的变化占大部分，而功能组成则主要表现为嵌套结构。沿河连续带的每个FPZ的社区成对比较显示，在三个被调查的河流中，高SO时社区组成发生了显着差异。在此手稿中，我们显示，在比较远处SO中的FPZ群落时，沿河连续带的FPZ群落仅具有部分可比性，因为发生了显着的成分变化。因此，我们带来了