Integrating behavioral, population and large-scale approaches for understanding stream insect communities

•Behavioral, population and large-scale processes are typically studied in isolation.•Integration of these processes is an important means to advance community ecology.•An approach to such integration is to examine variation in behavioral trait groups.•Increased understanding of stream insect communities benefits applied research.

Stream insects are ubiquitous in running waters, show high diversity in terms of species numbers, form and function, have key roles in ecosystem processes, and are thereby important components of ecological research. Here, we emphasize that the integration of behavior, population-level processes and large-scale constraints, such as the history of the regional species pool, drainage basin morphology and environmental conditions, may be key to increasing our understanding of how stream insect communities are assembled. We argue that as an alternative to analyzing the species composition of whole insect communities, focusing on variation in the composition of behavioral trait groups is likely to provide increased understanding of how stream insect communities are assembled, thereby linking behavioral, population and community ecology.