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The chironomid Benthic Quality Index (BQI) is a widely used metric in assessments of lake status. The BQI is based on 7 indicator taxa, which like most profundal fauna, often occur sporadically in low densities. Hence, a major weakness of the index is that it cannot be calculated when indicator taxa are not captured. Thus, an extension of the BQI that incorporates more macroinvertebrate taxa is desirable. We used 2 statistical approaches (Detrended Correspondence Analysis and Weighted Averaging) to estimate new benthic quality indicator scores for profundal macroinvertebrate taxa and to construct modified BQIs called Profundal Invertebrate Community Metrics (PICMs). We calibrated the PICMs and evaluated their bioassessment performance with macroinvertebrate and environmental data from 735 lake basins in Finland. Both PICMs included 70 taxa and could be calculated for a substantially greater …