Monitoring programs using benthic macroinvertebrates are well-used and expanding to areas where communities are species-poor. The sensitivity of these depauperate communities to environmental conditions, however, is not well known. In this study, impoverished benthic invertebrate communities were compared from three climatically and geologically distinct regions of Newfoundland. Differences in community structure were evident among regions at both the genus and family level. These results indicate that widely dispersing and depauperate macroinvertebrate communities can be sufficiently diverse to respond to regional variation in environmental conditions and therefore remain promising for detecting anthropogenic-induced changes.