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Footprints of Stress in Communities

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Stress Ecology

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Abstract

Environmental stress and degradation can affect individuals, populations, and communities directly and indirectly in obvious ways such as mass mortality, reduced fecundity, or both, ultimately leading to extinction of populations and even entire species. More subtle effects include reduced growth, increased disease susceptibility, and increased rates of morphological anomalies (Allenbach 2011), as well as changes in food-web structures. Overall, there is great interest in understanding and monitoring sub-lethal biological responses that are faithful indicators of environmental stresses. Consequently, this chapter will introduce several phenotypic approaches (fluctuating asymmetry, quality indices, maturity index, species at risk indices) and one theory-based approach (biomass spectra) to assess the integrity of populations, communities, or even ecosystems. Overall, there is a gap between molecular, biological, and biochemical stress identification on the one hand and stress evaluation on higher aggregated levels on the other hand, and this gap does not seem to be easily bridged. Both parts of stress ecology appear to be different disciplines.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Ecology is an analzing, rather than a moralizing science.

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  1. Department of Biology Laboratory of Freshwater and Stress Ecology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Späthstraße 80/81, 12437, Berlin, Germany

    Christian E. W. Steinberg

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Correspondence to Christian E. W. Steinberg .

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Steinberg, C.E.W. (2012). Footprints of Stress in Communities. In: Stress Ecology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2072-5_14

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