Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Methods & Sampling
  • Data Processing Description
• Data Files
• Supplemental Files
• Related Publications
• Related Datasets
• Parameters
• Project Information
• Funding

The main data table served from this Dataset Metadata Page includes data columns "Species" and "Abundance"  (See "Parameters" section for more details about columns in the main data table).  An alternate format of this dataset is available in the "Data Files" section which has an abundance column per species with a form of the species name as the column name. 

The alternate data format has two separate tables divided by whether it is for introduced species or native and cryptogenic species.  That information is included in the main data table for this dataset in column "Species_status_type."

These data were used for the publication Lopez and Freestone (2020) and only include composition for taxa identified to genus or species and represent a subset of the data collected for OCE-1434528.

Location:  Ketchikan, AK, San Francisco, CA, La Paz, Mexico, and Panama City, Panama

Methodology: Marine invertebrate communities grew on artificial settlement panels hung on floating docks one-meter below the water surface at local marinas in three coastal sites at each region (locations above).

Sampling and analytical procedures: Marine invertebrates from each community were identified on a 50-point grid to generate a measure of percent cover by taxa. The National Exotic Marine and Estuarine Species Information System (NEMESIS) was used to assign status to confirmed species and complemented status information with published literature.

BCO-DMO Data Manager Processing Notes:
* Imported files  Rel_Abun_3mo_int_all_latlong.csv and Rel_Abun_3mo_nat_all_latlong.csv into the BCO-DMO data system. 
* Combined the two data tables adding a new column to capture the species type (int or nat).
* unpivoted dataset. This transforms from all columns per species containing relative abundance into one column "Species" containing the taxonomic name and one column "Abundance" containing the relative abundance.
* removed underscores in taxonomic names.  Added the two data tables before combining and unpivoting to the  "Data Files" section of this Dataset Metadata Page.
* changed column names to match BCO-DMO naming conventions (only underscores and a-Z0-9)
* Taxonomic names matched to accepted taxonomic names using the World Register of Marine Species taxa match tool on 2021-04-26.  Names were not changed in this dataset. Misspelled and unaccepted synonyms are present in the data. A species list including the matches accepted names, aphiaIDs, and LSIDs attached to this dataset as a supplemental file.  For more information see https://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=match

Description from NSF award abstract:
Global patterns of biodiversity demonstrate that most of the species on earth occur in the tropics, with strikingly fewer species occurring in higher-latitude regions. Biologists predict that this global pattern of species diversity is likely shaped by thee ecological interactions between species. Yet few detailed experimental data exist that demonstrate how species interactions influence natural communities from the tropics to the arctic. Therefore, a significant opportunity exists to transform our understanding of how these fundamental species interactions shape patterns of biodiversity across the globe. Furthermore, these species interactions have the strong potential to limit potentially harmful biological invasions by non-native species, which are often transported by human activities that can breach historical dispersal barriers, such as ocean basins and continents. Biological invasions can cause undesired ecological and economic effects and are considered one of the primary drivers of global change. Through extensive field research on marine ecosystems along the Pacific Coast of North and Central America, from the tropics to the subarctic, this project will study ecological factors that shape global patterns of diversity and limit biological invasions.

Biologists have long theorized that the latitudinal diversity gradient may be shaped by stronger species interactions, such as competition and predation, occurring in the tropics than at higher latitudes. Prior research suggests that predation pressure is indeed stronger at lower latitudes, but it is unclear how interactive effects of predation and competition structure communities to maintain these diversity patterns in ecological time. This project represents an international research program to expand ecological understanding of species interactions across latitude. The objectives are to determine the relative influences of two primary species interactions, competition and predation, on patterns of species diversity, community assembly and sensitivity to species invasion. Field research will employ a large-scale experimental approach that focuses on sessile marine invertebrate communities across 47 degrees of latitude (over 7000 km). Experiments will manipulate levels of predation and competition for one year and will be conducted in four regions, ranging from the subarctic to the tropics: Alaska, California, Mexico, and Panama. Communities of sessile marine invertebrates, composed of both native and non-native species, will be examined iteratively under different predation and competition regimes to evaluate community dynamics. The relative importance of a suite of factors, including environmental conditions and recruitment rates, to interaction outcomes will be evaluated.