Data files for the paper "Separating faces in ARMS metabarcoding improves marine biodiversity monitoring: a comparison across protocols, experimental designs, and photographic surveys"

This submission contains the data files associated with the paper: Separating faces in ARMS metabarcoding improves marine biodiversity monitoring: a comparison across protocols, experimental designs, and photographic surveys, accepted in Molecular Ecology Resources. The demultiplexed FASTQ files generated from the metabarcoding analyses have been deposited in the SRA under BioProject accession PRJNA1231031. However, the analyses described in the paper were performed using VTAM, which first merges paired-end FASTQ reads and converts them into FASTA files prior to demultiplexing and trimming of tags and primers. Consequently, the analytical workflow started from the original non-demultiplexed raw FASTQ files rather than from the demultiplexed FASTQ files available in the SRA. This dataset therefore includes: the original non-demultiplexed raw FASTQ files used in the VTAM analyses; and the custom reference database used for taxonomic assignment. The analysis pipeline and the associated metadata files required to reproduce the analyses are available at https://github.com/meglecz/seamobb_photo_metabarcoding