To fully understand this rationale, it is necessary to define stress – a concept adopted from physiology but now widely used in ecology as well. In plant ecology, stress has been distinctly defined as the reduction in growth or biomass production caused by an external constraint (Grime 1977). It is this definition that allows Fuge`re et al. (2012) to interpret a gradient in food quality as a stress gradient, reasoning that consumers cannot realize maximum growth on a low-quality diet. One might argue that using the stress-gradient hypothesis as a framework for examining a detritus-detritivore system is a stretch, because food is (almost) always beneficial rather than stressful to consumers, even if its quality is low. However, if Grime’s (1977) definition of stress for plants is literally transferred to consumers (i.e. stress curbs growth), then the logic by Fuge`re et al. (2012) holds.