ReefSYN | Standardized datasets of Brazilian reef diversity in space and time - Dataset XVI: Benthic communities from Rio Grande do Norte

Study Extent

This dataset was collected at the same spatial unit from the Dataset XI by Guilherme Longo and Natália Roos. Benthic cover was sampled with photoquadrats of 25 × 25 cm every 2 m within the 40 m² (20 × 2 m) belt transects, resulting in 10 photos per transect.

Sampling

These data were used in the same publication indicated in the fish monitoring data (Roos et al. 2019). Since then, the Marine Ecology Laboratory Team (https://twitter.com/MarineEcoBR) continued monitoring two localities within the shallow patchy reefs from the municipality of Rio do Fogo with this same method until August 2023. As more images are processed and temporal data are generated, these will be organized accordingly and added to this repository. Roos NC, Pennino MG, Carvalho AR, Longo GO (2019) Drivers of abundance and biomass of Brazilian parrotfishes. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 623:117-130. doi: 10.3354/meps13005

Method steps

1. Each belt transect had 10 photos, which were analyzed with the software ‘photoQuad’ (Trygonis and Sini 2012) by randomly laying 30 points over the phoquadrat area. The organisms below each point were identified into morpho-functional groups, and to species or genus level when possible. This dataset contains 285 photoquadrats (benthic data gathered around UVCs of dataset VIII) between 2016 and 2017 at seven distinct locations.

1. Agaricia agaricites
2. Agaricia fragilis
3. Agelas dispar
4. Aiolochroia crassa
5. Amphimedon
6. Amphiroa
7. Amphiroideae
8. Aplysina fulva
9. Aplysina lactuca
10. Aplysina lacunosa
11. Astrangia rathbuni
12. Bryozoa
13. Callyspongia vaginalis
14. Canistrocarpus cervicornis
15. Carijoa riisei
16. Caulerpa racemosa
17. Caulerpa verticillata
18. Cliona delitrix
19. Corallinales
20. Cyanobacteria
21. Dictyopteris
22. Dictyopteris jolyana
23. Dictyopteris justii
24. Dictyopteris plagiogramma
25. Dictyota
26. Dictyota menstrualis
27. Dictyota mertensii
28. Digenea simplex
29. Echinoidea
30. Favia gravida
31. Gelidium floridanum
32. Gelidium pusillum
33. Halimeda discoidea
34. Halimeda opuntia
35. Halymenia
36. Hydrozoa
37. Ircinia felix
38. Ircinia strobilina
39. Jania
40. Lobophora variegata
41. Madracis decactis
42. Millepora alcicornis
43. Millepora braziliensis
44. Monanchora arbuscula
45. Montastraea cavernosa
46. Mussismilia hispida
47. Palythoa caribaeorum
48. Palythoa grandiflora
49. Palythoa variabilis
50. Plakinastrella microspiculifera
51. Polychaeta
52. Porifera
53. Porites astreoides
54. Pseudosuberites
55. Sargassum
56. Siderastrea
57. Ulva
58. Valonia ventricosa
59. Zoanthus sociatus

This data is relative to seven reefs along the Rio Grande do Norte coast (Brazil).