Chesapeake Bay and Baltic Sea phytoplankton sample metadata

<p>We analyze the relationship between species richness, salinity and resource use efficiency from 10712 summer (June to September) surface phytoplankton samples from the Chesapeake Bay (n=3967) and the Baltic Sea (n=6745). As sample species richness (alpha diversity) has a U-shape distribution along an estuarine salinity gradient and species richness is known to scale with resource use efficiency – an important ecosystem function, we hypothesized that the ecosystem function can be predicted from salinity.</p>