©2020 Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office.This dataset includes biomass and diversity measurements of eelgrass communities from 50 sites across the Northern Hemisphere. The purpose was to study the plant and animal responses to top-down and bottom-up manipulations in eelgrass (Zostera marina) habitat.
Twenty meter square plots (2 meters apart) were sampled at 50 eelgrass meadows ("sites") in summer 2014. Abiotic parameters were quantified in situ and/or using local monitoring station data. The epifaunal community was quantified as in Duffy et al. 2015. Seagrass density was quantified in 20cm diameter rings, and dry mass from 20 cm diameter cores which captured all above ground mass, and below ground to a depth of 20 cm. A three centimeter section from each of 5 shoots per plot was quantified for leaf carbon and nitrogen (processed at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science), while another 3 cm section was utilized for plant genetic analyses (processed by J. Olsen at the University of Groningen). Additional details are included in the Zostera Experimental Network 2014 survey handbook protocol, available upon request.
Methodology is available from: J. Emmett Duffy, et al. Biodiversity mediates top-down control in eelgrass ecosystems: A global comparative-experimental approach. 2015. Ecology Letters 18:7 (696–705). DOI: 10.1111/ele.12448.
Duffy, J. E., Hovel, K., Stachowicz, J. J., Reynolds, P. L. (2021) Abiotic and biotic data from Zostera Experimental Network (ZEN) 2014 surveys (ZEN 2 project). Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO). (Version 1) Version Date 2016-09-26 [if applicable, indicate subset used]. doi:10.26008/1912/bco-dmo.712069.1 [access date]
Terms of Use
This dataset is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
If you wish to use this dataset, it is highly recommended that you contact the original principal investigators (PI). Should the relevant PI be unavailable, please contact BCO-DMO (info@bco-dmo.org) for additional guidance. For general guidance please see the BCO-DMO Terms of Use document.