Data and script: Reduced enumeration effort, but not coarse taxonomic resolution, is sufficient to represent beta diversity patterns of stream benthic diatoms

This is a dataset on benthic diatom communities sampled in 90 riffles (the local communities) within nine near-pristine subtropical streams (each stream represented a metacommunity) in southeast subtropical Brazil. 

In addition to the dataset, we also provide the R code used to investigate whether reduced enumeration efforts (i.e., subsets of counted valves per sample) and the identification to the genus level are sufficient to recover patterns in the species composition and in beta diversity of benthic diatom metacommunities.