General understanding of freshwater positive interactions has been far outpaced by knowledge of these important relationships in terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Positive interactions are sensitive to human impacts, necessitating synthetic approaches to elucidate broad patterns and predict future changes if these interactions are altered or lost.  We conducted a global meta-analysis to evaluate the magnitude of positive interactions across freshwater habitats. In 340 studies, we found substantial positive effects, with facilitators increasing beneficiaries by, on average, 81% across all taxa and response variables. Mollusks in particular were commonly studied as both facilitators and beneficiaries. Amphibians were one group benefiting the most from positive interactions, yet amphibians were not commonly studied. Invasive facilitators had stronger positive effects on beneficiaries than native facilitators. We compared positive effects between high and low stress conditions (n = 13) and found no difference in the magnitude of benefit. Future areas of research include understudied facilitators and beneficiaries, the stress gradient hypothesis, patterns across space or time, and the influence of declining taxa whose elimination would jeopardize fragile positive interaction networks. Freshwater positive interactions occur among a wide range of taxa, influence populations, communities, and ecosystem processes, and deserve further exploration

Please see readME.txt for associated metadata. The attached dataset includes both the full dataset used for the analysis (PositiveInteractionsF.csv), a small subset of the data used to evaluate the stress gradient hypothesis (PositiveInteractionsStress.csv), and geographical information on study locations (PositiveInteractionsLocs.csv).