Measuring ecological stress: variations on a theme by R.M. Warwick

Abstract

Two new indices are presented which reflect quantitatively the changes to be expected in an ecological community under stress, as previously described by R. M. Warwick. The indices summarize information which he presented graphically, and permit analyses of trends and inferential tests. We suggest that these indices should be tested with a wide variety of ecological time-series data in order to evaluate the feasibility of inferring ecological stress from static data.