A database of marine phytoplankton abundance, biomass and species composition in Australian waters

There have been many individual phytoplanktondatasets collected across Australia since the mid 1900s, but most are unavailable to the research community. We have searched archives, contacted researchers, and scanned the primary and grey literatureto collate 3,621,847 records of marine phytoplanktonspecies from Australian waters from 1844 to the present. Many of these are small datasets collected for local questions, but combined they provide over 170 years of data on phytoplanktoncommunities in Australian waters. Units and taxonomy have been standardised, obviously erroneous data removed, and all metadata included. We have lodged this dataset with the Australian Ocean Data Network (http://portal.aodn.org.au/) allowing public access. The Australian PhytoplanktonDatabase will be invaluable for global changestudies, as it allows analysis of ecological indicatorsof climate change and eutrophication (e.g., changes in distribution; diatom:dinoflagellate ratios). In addition, the standardised conversion of abundance records to biomass provides modellerswith quantifiable data to initialise and validate ecosystem modelsof lower marine trophic levels.