Living foraminifera relative abundances and total organic carbon in European Atlantic intertidal and transitional areas
Description
This database was built to assign benthic foraminiferal species to ecological groups of sensitivity to total organic carbon (see Bouchet et al, 2021 in Marine Pollution Bulletin for more details). Because of the particular characteristics of foraminiferal habitats and communities, we decided to present the database split in two: one for the English Channel/European Atlantic and one for the Mediterranean region. The overall aim of this paper is to provide foraminiferal ecologists with a ready-to-use database detailing foraminiferal species relative abundances and total organic content (%) in the studied sampling site to be used for ecological, biogeographical and environmental monitoring purpose.
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The aim was to collect data on total organic carbon (TOC) and benthic foraminifera in order to classify benthic foraminifera in ecological groups of sensitivity to TOC (Borja et al. 2000). Studies had to fulfil the following criteria: 1) coming from the English Channel, the French, Spanish and Portuguese Atlantic coasts and the Mediterranean Sea, 2) sampled from intertidal areas and transitional waters, 3) based on living foraminifera, 4) TOC sample must come from the same site at the same date as foraminiferal sample, 5) only samples containing >50 living stained specimens were considered. If only organic matter content (%) was provided, it was converted to TOC using the following formula: LOI (loss-on-ignition) = 2 TOC (Barillé et al., 2003, Frangipane et al., 2009). When foraminiferal raw counts or abundances were available, there were transformed to relative abundances. Primary data – Data from unpublished studies (studies 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) were provided by their authors. When the raw data were not published with the peer-reviewed publication (studies 13, 33 and 41), the authors were contacted to provide us with the raw data. Secondary data – When available, relative abundances data were downloaded from online sources where the study was published. When only raw counts or abundances were published, foraminiferal data were transformed to relative abundances. We standardized species names according to the World Registry of Marine Species (WoRMS). All data processing and analysis was done in the open-source software R. Table S1: English Channel and European Atlantic region Table S2: The Mediterranean Sea Reference lists: Sources for primary and secondary data