In recent years, declining insect biodiversity has sparked interest among scientists and drawn the attention of society and politicians. However, our understanding of the extent of this decline is incomplete, particularly for freshwater insects that provide a key trophic link between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, but that are also especially vulnerable to climate change. To investigate the response of freshwater insects to climate change, we quantified shifts in insect abundance and diversity across 7264 samples covering Central Europe during 1990-2018 and related these changes to annual data on temperature and precipitation. We observed both increases in richness (10.6 %) and abundance (9.5 %) of freshwater insects over the past three decades. These changes were related to increases in summer temperature and summer precipitation, which had negative effects on species richness, and to increases in winter temperature and precipitation, which had positive effects. Further we found that increased temperature was generally related to increased abundance, whereas increased precipitation was associated with declines, thus highlighting the particularly varying impacts on differing insect orders. Given that freshwater insects have been more severely affected by global change than marine and terrestrial species, the observed increases are a positive sign, but the overall situation of freshwater invertebrates is still critical.

Environmental Archaeology Lab Department of Historical Philosophical and Religious Studies Umeå University Biblioteksgränd 3 907 36 Umeå Sweden

Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt Department of River Ecology and Conservation Clamecystrasse 12 63571 Gelnhausen Germany; University of Duisburg Essen Faculty of Biology Universitätsstrasse 5 45141 Essen Germany

Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt Department of River Ecology and Conservation Clamecystrasse 12 63571 Gelnhausen Germany; University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice Faculty of Fisheries and Protection of Waters South Bohemian Research Center of Aquaculture and Biodiversity of Hydrocenoses Vodňany Czech Republic; CAMB Center for Applied Mathematics and Bioinformatics Gulf University for Science and Technology Kuwait

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Temporal niche dynamics of spreading native invertebrates underlie doubling of richness in pristine temperate streams