Data from: Marine latitudinal diversity gradients, niche conservatism, and out of the tropics and Arctic: climatic sensitivity of small organisms ...

• Main Authors: Chiu, Wing Tung Ruby, Yasuhara, Moriaki, Cronin, Thomas, Hunt, Gene, Gemery, Laura, Wei, Chih-Lin
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2020
• Subjects: Benthos; Ostracoda; Arctic; Valentine; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.3n5tb2rcp; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.3n5tb2rcp

Aim The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) is a consequence of evolutionary and ecological mechanisms acting over long history, and thus is best investigated with organisms that have rich fossil records. However, combined neontological-paleontological investigations are mostly limited to large, shelled invertebrates, which keeps our mechanistic understanding of LDGs in its infancy. This paper aims to describe the modern meiobenthic ostracod LDG and to explore the possible controlling factors and the evolutionary mechanisms of this large-scale biodiversity pattern. Location Present-day Western North Atlantic Taxon Ostracoda Methods We compiled census data from ostracods living in shallow marine environments of the western North Atlantic Ocean. Using these data, we documented the marine LDG with multiple metrics of alpha, beta (nestedness and turnover), and gamma diversity, and we tested whether macroecological patterns could be governed by different environmental factors, including temperature, salinity, ... : 1. Present-day shallow marine ostracod data We constructed a comprehensive, equator-to-pole compilation of ostracod censuses from the western North Atlantic and the Arctic Oceans. We standardized ostracod taxonomy and integrated census data from previously published studies, which involved restudy of previous collections. We obtained complete ostracod census data from the original faunal slides from the US Geological Survey’s collections, including those of Hazel (1970), Valentine (1971), Cronin (1983), Cronin (1990) and Lyon (1990). Taxonomy was based on Cronin (1990) with additional information for high latitude species from Yasuhara et al. (2012) and Gemery et al. (2015). In addition to the census data from the USGS collections, census data from Kontrovitz (1976), Teeter (1975), and the Arctic Ostracode Database (Gemery et al., 2015) were added to our dataset after standardizing taxonomy using SEM pictures and descriptions from the literature. Locality information (longitude, latitude and water depth) was ...