Macrobenthic community structure in estuarine pollution assessment on the Gulf of Cadiz (SW Spain): is the phylum-level meta-analysis approach applicable?

Macrobenthic species abundances and biomasses were determined at twelve sta tions from three estuarine areas of the Gulf of Cadiz (SW Spain). They are subject to different sources of pollution: urban effluents (Bay of Cadiz), agricultural/urban sewages (Barbate River Estuary) and mining/industrial se wages (Odiel River Estuary). Different univariate and multivariate techniqu es were used in the assessment of the community disturbance status. At the Species-level, inferences from Gray and Pearson's graphics together with mu ltivariate MDS ordinations provided a reliable picture of the severity of t he community disturbance at the twelve sampling sites. At the Phylum-level, the meta-analysis of "production" also gale a reliable disturbance status for all the stations, when new samples mere introduced in the MDS analysis one by one. These results suggest a more general applicability of the Phylu m-level meta-analysis, provided that the original NE Atlantic data ordinati on remains unmodified. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.