Recent work has shown that benthic invertebrate assemblages may be influenced in an ongoing fashion by dispersal. Water-column movements of meiofauna, juvenile insects and marine postlarvae are common and can act to alter greatly local dynamics such as predator-prey and competitive interactions in marine and stream ecosystems. These findings are important because past research on the role of dispersal in invertebrate dynamics has focused almost exclusively on how planktonic larval supply influences the establishment and maintenance of local assemblages, on the colonization of newly opened sites, or on the settlement success of new recruits. The emerging framework is that dispersal needs to be viewed as a regional process that may routinely influence local benthic dynamics, because fauna can move to and from water-column dispersal 'pools' and may do so at frequent intervals.