Detection of pollution-induced disturbance in marine benthic assemblages with special reference to nematodes

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Abstract
Benthic marine nematode assemblages were assessed for possible use in the detection of pollution-induced disturbance. Doubt was cast on a recently proposed method which claimed to observe deviation from a log-normal distribution of species abundance. Little evidence was found to substantiate the belief that natural marine nematode assemblages in temperate waters were well described by the log-normal distribution. This conclusion may not be restricted to nematodes. Simple dominance was suggested as a potentially more practical method of assessing changes due to pollution.