A database of marine phytoplankton abundance, biomass and species composition in Australian waters

There have been many individual phytoplankton datasets collected across Australia since the mid 1900s, but most are unavailable to the research community. We have searched archives, contacted researchers, and scanned the primary and grey literature to collate 3,621,847 records of marine phytoplankton species from Australian waters from 1844 to the present. Many of these are small datasets collected for local questions, but combined they provide over 170 years of data on phytoplankton communities in Australian waters. Units and taxonomy have been standardised, obviously erroneous data removed, and all metadata included. We have lodged this dataset with the Australian Ocean Data Network (http://portal.aodn.org.au/) allowing public access. The Australian Phytoplankton Database will be invaluable for global change studies, as it allows analysis of ecological indicators of climate change and eutrophication (e.g., changes in distribution; diatom:dinoflagellate ratios). In addition, the standardised conversion of abundance records to biomass provides modellers with quantifiable data to initialise and validate ecosystem models of lower marine trophic levels

Corrigendum: A database of marine phytoplankton abundance, biomass and species composition in Australian waters (Scientific Data (2016) 3 (160043) DOI: 10.1038/sdata201643))

© The Author(s) 2016. A series of errors in our database were brought to our attention by readers, and have been corrected in an updated version of this database, which is accessible via the AODN at the following link: https://portal.aodn.org.au/search?uuid =75f4f1fc-bee3-4498-ab71-aa1ab29ab2c0 The custodian details of several datasets were incorrect. These fields in the metadata table have been updated to correctly assign P744, P746, P748, and P778 to the Australian Antarctic Division, and P752 to the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences. Species names and functional group assignments have been changed for a small number of records to fix identified errors. Tripos brevis and Tripos arietinus were spelt incorrectly, and have been duly corrected. Pedinellaceae was wrongly assigned to dinoflagellate as a functional group, and has now been re-assigned to flagellate. The 'Naked flagellate' group has been renamed 'Flagellate' as there is some inconsistency in the use of the term 'Naked flagellate' and what precisely would be included. The functional group 'Other', has also been excluded as this contained data that was not necessarily phytoplankton but had been found in phytoplankton counts. The macroalgae Murrayella australica, Cladophora spp., Chlorohormidium sp., Eudorina spp., Tribonema spp., Chlorohormidium spp. were also removed. In addition to these corrections, three datasets have been extended to include more recently acquired data: P 597 IMOS Australian Continuous Plankton Recorder survey (ongoing dataset, 59089 new records as of 2016-08-31); P599 IMOS National Reference Stations (ongoing dataset, 14669 new records as of 2016-08-31); and P1068 Great Barrier Reef Expedition 1928-29 (new dataset, 1340 new records). Table 1 provides a summary of the overall change in database contents. (Table Presented). This dataset will continue to grow and will be regularly updated with new data and any further corrections to the data. Users can email imos-planktonatcsiro.au with any comments, which will be reviewed and included in future updates if applicable. The AODN portal will always direct the user to the most recent version, the original version will remain available at http://dx.doi.org/10.4225/69/ 56454b2ba2f79, and interim versions will be available on request