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

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