Tropical South America Diatom Database (TSADB)

<p>Determining the mechanisms of community assembly forms the foundation of biogeography and community ecology. Studies of the biodiversity and distribution of Neotropical macro-organisms have revealed the roles of environmental, spatial, and historical factors in structuring communities at different spatial and temporal scales, but the role of these factors play for species and communities on microorganisms are still poorly known. Diatoms are a very species-rich group of algae, disperse widely, and sensitive to environmental variation due to their position in the base of aquatic food webs. Here, we present the Tropical South American Diatom Database (TSADB) which contains geographical and ecological information of species across lentic and lotic environments, including predictors that describe local (limnological) and regional (geo-climatic) factors. The database can be used to tackle fundamental questions in macroecology, including metacommunity ecology and biogeography theories that form the foundation for better understanding the rapid environmental change the tropical regions are experiencing. The TSADB includes diatom taxa from 437 samples in 326 sites containing distributed across 26 regions (0 to 5,070 m a.s.l, and between 8°N–35°S; 58–90°W). In addition, long-term, diatom-based paleolimnological records are presented as a complementary tool for identifying regions with available modern and paleo-datasets for a long-term limnological change observatory in the tropical Americas. We describe the TSADB structure and functionality, and R codes for data manipulation and visualization. Each of the 26 study regions is represented by 3 data matrices: sampling site information, environmental variables (limnology, climate, and landscape), and diatom community data (relative abundance or presence/absence). Access to data and future additions is through publicly available repositories and a guide to contributors, respectively, providing opportunities for complementing existing databases on diatoms and allowing optimal usage of TSADB by scientist including diatomists, limnologists, aquatic ecologists, and natural resource managers.</p>