Theory predicts that the temporal stability of a community should increase with diversity. However, despite increasing interest in the topic, studies using observational field data to examine the relationship between diversity and stability of community properties are surprisingly rare. We examined the diversity-stability relationship of stream invertebrate communities using a four-year data set from boreal headwater streams. Among-year similarity in community structure (Bray-Curtis coefficient) was used as a measure of stability. Variation in this coefficient was related to species richness and major environmental gradients (i.e. habitat size, habitat complexity, and potential productivity) using partial regressions. Only species richness and habitat complexity were significantly related to stability. There was, however, a strong relationship between species richness and community abundance. When community abundance was fixed to the lowest observed number of macroinvertebrates using re-sampling, stability was unrelated to species richness, indicating that community abundance was the predominant variable producing stability-diversity relationship in our study system. Since streams characterised by heterogeneous substrates in terms of ample macrophyte cover and variable substratum particle size are likely to harbour the most diverse and temporally stable communities, restoration of stream habitat complexity is likely to be a prerequisite for temporally stable and diverse stream macroinvertebrate communities.