Contaminants may affect marine organisms through various pathways with impacts evident across a variety of spatial and temporal scales. Organisms may encounter short pulsed exposures which contaminate surface waters for hours to days, or more persistent but patchy contamination of benthic habitats throughout their entire life-cycle. This thesis examines the responses of epifauna associated with macroalgae to a pulsed exposure of contaminants (storm-water input) and to chronic contamination via metal accumulation within temperate algal beds. The effects of storm water were monitored during a two-year survey of Sydney Harbour which sampled epifauna before and after heavy rainfall. Epifaunal assemblages declined throughout the harbour following storm events but for the most part these declines were not attributable to storm-water runoff. However, transient (&lt 4 d) and localized impacts of storm water upon physico-chemical characteristics of recipient water and some epifaunal groups were identified around storm drains. A novel field dosing technique tested the relative importance of freshwater and associated metals as causative agents of behavioural avoidance and direct mortality responses. Strong avoidance of storm-water plumes was found which could be entirely explained by freshwater inundation, with no additional effects of metals. No direct mortality was observed following brief exposures. Contaminants introduced by storm water may accumulate within the tissues of macroalgae and potentially pose persistent threats to epifauna. Colonisation of epifauna was reduced on algae with enhanced copper levels, and the nesting behaviour, feeding and survival of an abundant amphipod were all negatively affected by copper load. Subsequent field surveys identified sufficient copper, lead and zinc contamination in Sydney Harbour algal beds to pose direct toxic threats to epifauna. The abundance of herbivorous amphipods correlated negatively with the copper content of a common algal species. However, differences in metal accumulation between algal species resulted in spatially variable levels of contamination. Small-scale patchiness of contaminants within these landscapes may allow populations of mobile species to persist if contaminated hosts are avoided. In summary, epifaunal assemblages appeared resilient to storm-water pulses. Recovery of affected groups was rapid and large fluctuations in abundance appear to be part of the natural flux of epifaunal communities. In contrast, assemblages responded strongly to algal-bound contaminants and this has emerged as an important pathway of contaminant exposure and impact within algal habitats.

Contaminants may affect marine organisms through various pathways with impacts evident across a variety of spatial and temporal scales. Organisms may encounter short pulsed exposures which contaminate surface waters for hours to days, or more persistent but patchy contamination of benthic habitats throughout their entire life-cycle. This thesis examines the responses of epifauna associated with macroalgae to a pulsed exposure of contaminants (storm-water input) and to chronic contamination via metal accumulation within temperate algal beds. The effects of storm water were monitored during a two-year survey of Sydney Harbour which sampled epifauna before and after heavy rainfall. Epifaunal assemblages declined throughout the harbour following storm events but for the most part these declines were not attributable to storm-water runoff. However, transient (&lt 4 d) and localized impacts of storm water upon physico-chemical characteristics of recipient water and some epifaunal groups were identified around storm drains. A novel field dosing technique tested the relative importance of freshwater and associated metals as causative agents of behavioural avoidance and direct mortality responses. Strong avoidance of storm-water plumes was found which could be entirely explained by freshwater inundation, with no additional effects of metals. No direct mortality was observed following brief exposures. Contaminants introduced by storm water may accumulate within the tissues of macroalgae and potentially pose persistent threats to epifauna. Colonisation of epifauna was reduced on algae with enhanced copper levels, and the nesting behaviour, feeding and survival of an abundant amphipod were all negatively affected by copper load. Subsequent field surveys identified sufficient copper, lead and zinc contamination in Sydney Harbour algal beds to pose direct toxic threats to epifauna. The abundance of herbivorous amphipods correlated negatively with the copper content of a common algal species. However, differences in metal accumulation between algal species resulted in spatially variable levels of contamination. Small-scale patchiness of contaminants within these landscapes may allow populations of mobile species to persist if contaminated hosts are avoided. In summary, epifaunal assemblages appeared resilient to storm-water pulses. Recovery of affected groups was rapid and large fluctuations in abundance appear to be part of the natural flux of epifaunal communities. In contrast, assemblages responded strongly to algal-bound contaminants and this has emerged as an important pathway of contaminant exposure and impact within algal habitats.

The problem of high proportion of zeroes has long been an interest in data analysis and modeling, however, there are no unique solutions to this problem. The solution to the individual problem really depends on its particular situation and the design of the experiment. For example, different biological, chemical, or physical processes may follow different distributions and behave differently. Different mechanisms may generate the zeroes and require different modeling approaches. So it would be quite impossible and inflexible to come up with a unique or a general solution. In this dissertation, I focus on cases where zeroes are produced by mechanisms that create distinct sub-populations of zeroes. The dissertation is motivated from problems of chronic toxicity testing which has a data set that contains a high proportion of zeroes. The analysis of chronic test data is complicated because there are two different sources of zeroes: mortality and non-reproduction in the data. So researchers have to separate zeroes from mortality and fecundity. The use of mixture model approach which combines the two mechanisms to model the data here is appropriate because it can incorporate the mortality kind of extra zeroes. A zero inflated Poisson (ZIP) model is used for modeling the fecundity in <i> Ceriodaphnia dubia</i> toxicity test. A generalized estimating equation (GEE) based ZIP model is developed to handle longitudinal data with zeroes due to mortality. A joint estimate of inhibition concentration (ICx) is also developed as potency estimation based on the mixture model approach. It is found that the ZIP model would perform better than the regular Poisson model if the mortality is high. This kind of toxicity testing also involves longitudinal data where the same subject is measured for a period of seven days. The GEE model allows the flexibility to incorporate the extra zeroes and a correlation structure among the repeated measures. The problem of zero-heavy data also exists in environmental studies in which the growth or reproduction rates of multi-species are measured. This gives rise to multivariate data. Since the inter-relationships between different species are imbedded in the correlation structure, the study of the information in the correlation of the variables, which is often accessed through principal component analysis, is one of the major interests in multi-variate data. In the case where mortality influences the variables of interests, but mortality is not the subject of interests, the use of the mixture approach can be applied to recover the information of the correlation structure. In order to investigate the effect of zeroes on multi-variate data, simulation studies on principal component analysis are performed. A method that recovers the information of the correlation structure is also presented. / Ph. D.