The Basin Plan seeks to protect and restore biodiversity in the Murray-Darling Basin’s aquatic ecosystems. Food webs are a critical ecosystem function believed to be important in sustaining ecological assets such as bird and fish populations, and modifying flow regimes is one of the main tools that river managers have for the active management of such functions. Flow has three major functions in riverine systems; providing water as a resource or habitat, a disturbance regime that triggers major life-history events and influences community composition and dynamics, and as a vector for connectivity and lateral, longitudinal and vertical exchange of material, energy and organisms. In the Basin, the role of flow in disturbance dynamics and as a trigger of life history events (such as breeding or dispersal) is reasonably well known. What is less clear is the role that the hydrological regime can play in determining the flux of energy through food webs – particularly to top order predators including native fish and water birds. In this presentation, we will explore the current state-of-knowledge on the influences of hydrology on food web dynamics, particularly in the Murray-Darling Basin and identify the critical knowledge gaps that need to be addressed to better manage flow regimes for better environmental outcomes.