Macrobenthic Community Structure in Estuarine Pollution Assessment on the Gulf of Cádiz (SW Spain): is the Phylum-level Meta-analysis Approach Applicable?

Macrobenthic species abundances and biomasses were determined at twelve stations from three estuarine areas of the Gulf of Cádiz (SW Spain). They are subject to different sources of pollution: urban effluents (Bay of Cádiz), agricultural/urban sewages (Barbate River Estuary) and mining/industrial sewages (Odiel River Estuary). Different univariate and multivariate techniques were used in the assessment of the community disturbance status. At the Species-level, inferences from Gray and Pearson’s graphics together with multivariate MDS ordinations provided a reliable picture of the severity of the community disturbance at the twelve sampling sites. At the Phylum-level, the meta-analysis of “production” also gave a reliable disturbance status for all the stations when new samples were introduced in the MDS analysis one by one. These results suggest a more general applicability of the Phylum-level meta-analysis, provided that the original NE Atlantic data ordination remains unmodified.