Empirical evidence of alternative stable states in an estuary.

Due to human activity, ecosystems are exceeding their ecological thresholds and shifting into undesired alternative stable states with new ecological configurations. Despite their purported ubiquity, it is uncertain whether estuaries can exist in multiple stable states. We use data from a 3.

Limited congruence exhibited across microbial, meiofaunal and macrofaunal benthic assemblages in a heterogeneous coastal environment.

One of the most common approaches for investigating the ecology of spatially complex environments is to examine a single biotic assemblage present, such as macroinvertebrates. Underlying this approach are assumptions that sampled and unsampled taxa respond similarly to environmental gradients and exhibit congruence across different sites. These assumptions were tested for five benthic groups of various sizes (archaea, bacteria, microbial eukaryotes/protists, meiofauna and macrofauna) in Plymouth Sound, a harbour with many different pollution sources.