The heterogeneous structure of the lotic benthic environment provides a complex array of choices for habitat selection by macroinvertebrates. The objective of this study was to examine the choices made at the microhabitat scale (small sectioned cores) by a community of larval chironomids on a sandy point-bar in the Lynches River from September 2003 to January 2004. Detrended correspondence analysis, which indicates species associations, determined that six of the 12 most common species (of 25 total) had isolated distributions while the other six associated more closely with one another. Canonical correspondence analysis placed each species’ distribution on orthogonal axes derived from 14 environmental variables. The most significant variables separating species were depth in the sediment, current speed, and the 0.25 mm sediment fraction. The first four canonical axes explained 77 % of the variance of the species-environment relation, which also showed the strong isolation of three species. The species-environment correlations for the first four canonical axes varied from 0.70 to 0.54. These results indicated that abiotic factors were important in separating a number of species at the microhabitat scale on a single point-bar, despite its apparent habitat homogeneity.