Benthic copepod records in the littoral area of Lake Maggiore

Study Extent

The dataset was compiled at CNR-IRSA with the collaboration of CNR-IRET. It includes occurrence records and abundance data of species of Copepoda Harpacticoida and Copepoda Cyclopoida of the littoral zone of Lake Maggiore that were collected from three sampling stations: Bolle di Magadino (MA), which is situated in the homonymous Smeraldo protected area in Switzerland, Fondo Toce (FT) and Angera-Sesto Calende (SC), in two sites that are part of Natura 2000 network in Italy. We examined two types of littoral habitats at each station: one that is permanently wet (W) and the other that experiences drought (D) during low lake levels. In each habitat, we collected three spatial replicates along an oblique transect

Sampling

Samples were collected in six summer months, between 2019 and 2021, during the periods of low water level (September 2019 and August 2020), medium (August 2019 and September 2020) and high water level (July 2020 and 2021). Therefore, the dataset is built up as six georeferenced sites (MA:W, MA:D, FT:W, FT:D, SC:W, SC:D), with three special replicates each. 234 records of the occurrence of 13 copepod species are included in the dataset. Copepod sampling was done using the techniques described in Cifoni et al. (2021). We disturbed, by foot, a 625 cm^2 submerged littoral area for 30 seconds. To gather the displaced copepod individuals, we trailed a hand net with a mesh of 60 µm over the disturbed area (Cifoni et al., 2022; Boggero et al., 2022). After being collected, the semi-quantitative samples were stored in bottles with a 70% ethanol solution (Suarez-Moralez, 2015) until they were sorted in the laboratory. We standardized the samples in the laboratory by sorting the sediments and selecting 150 meiobenthic individuals with a glass pipette under a stereomicroscope at 16× magnification according to Cifoni et al. (2022).

Quality Control

Validation for taxonomic consistency was performed using World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS Editorial Board, 2023).
Taxon specialists: Diana Maria Paola Galassi
Quality control for geographic information: Google Maps was used to verify the accuracy of the coordinates. The dataset's geographic coordinate format, locations that fall inside state or provincial borders, and anomalous ASCII characters were examined.

Method steps

1. The datasetincludes 22 columns with each row containing a record of a harpacticoid o cyclopoid species with taxonomy information in accordance with the Darwin Core Standard (Wieczorek et al., 2012). It is accessible via Internet Publishing Toolkit (IPT) of the GBIF node “Europe and Central Asia” (https://cloud.gbif.org/eca/). The 22 columns show the event ID number, the occurrence ID, the basis of record, the event date, the scientific name of the species, taxon rank. There are 9 columns that refer to kingdom, phylum, subphylum, class, orders, families, subfamilies, genera and species. Further columns show geographic coordinates, unit of measure and reference system, country code, locality, organism count referred to a standardized samples of 150 meiofaunal individuals (see Sampling design paragraph), and organism quantity type. A combination of SamplingSite: Habitat: ReplicateNumber makes up the "eventID". The "occurrenceID" is made up of Publisher Name: Habitat: ReplicateNumber: Species; SamplingSite.

The data set represents the two dominant orders of freshwater copepods, Harpacticoida and Cyclopoida, of the meiobethic metazoan assemblages of the littoral of Lake Maggiore.
Taxonomic ranks: Data from species, genus, subfamily, family, order, class, subphylum, phylum and kingdom rank were included in the dataset.

1. Arthropoda
   common name: crustacea rank: phylum
2. Copepoda
   rank: subclass
3. Harpacticoida
   rank: order
4. Cyclopoida
   rank: order

Biogeographic region: Alpine (EEA, 2017)<br Country: Italy, Switzerland
Locality: Lake Maggiore
Geographical subdivisions: Lombardy and Piedmont regions (Italy); Canton Tessin (Switzerland).
Bounding box: latitude 45.722039 - 46.179841, longitude 8.481792 - 8.860820.