Species and supraspecies lists and richness of macrofauna from the Far Eastern seas, eastern Arctic seas, and adjacent waters of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans

These are primary and additional materials (tables and figures) for the article Volvenko, I. V., Gebruk, A. V., Katugin, O. N., Vinogradov, G. M., & Orlov, A. M. (2023). What can supraspecies richness tell us? Geographical Research, 1–9.

It shows that species and higher taxa richness strongly correlate with each other. Therefore, species richness can be assessed using genus, family, or order richness. However, supraspecies richness itself can tell us the same as species richness. Certain laws revealed at the species level could be discovered at the supraspecies level. The use of supraspecies richness in biogeography, ecology, palaeontology, and conservation is expedient and beneficial.

Supplement 1 contains tables with data: Table S1— Parameters of samples used to generate the checklists; Table S2—Species list; Table S3—Genus list; Table S4—Family list; Table S5—Order list; Table S6—Species and supraspecies richness, based on the data in tables S2–S5.

Supplement 2 contains additional figures and a table based on the data from Supplement 1: Figures S1–S7—Relationship between taxonomic richness in different biotopes and taxocenes, and the surveyed area and sample size; Figures S8–S16—Taxonomic richness in different biotopes and taxocenes in marine basins; Figures S17–S25—Relationship between species and supraspecies richness in different biotopes and taxocenes; Table S7—Regression parameters for species richness calculations using supraspecies richness.

Supplement 3 contains a table and figures with calculations for abbreviated taxonomic lists (without rows containing sp., gen. sp., etc.): Table S8—Species and supraspecies richness based on data in the abbreviated Tables S2–S5, from which rows with inaccurate identifications have been removed before richness calculation; Figures S26–S53—The same figures as in Supplement 2 but based on Table S8 data.

Methods
The source data for the present work were taken using mid-water and benthic trawls lined with a 10–12 millimetres (mm) mesh at the cod end from 1977 to 2018 in the seas of Japan and Okhotsk, Bering, Chukchi, East Siberian, Laptev seas and adjacent waters of the Pacific and Arctic Oceans at depths down to 2,200 m.

Based on a full data set (Table S1), the checklist was generated showing presence (+) or absence (–) of each object (identified to the level of species, genus, family, or order) in certain basins at benthic and/or pelagic stations. Objects missing in our samples but present in a basin based on published sources are marked with an asterisk (*) instead of a minus (–). Published sources on the occurrence of species and their taxonomic status include 137 titles, most found in our earlier publications, with several new sources added.

Based on the combined list, lists of species, genera, families, and orders were generated (Tables S2–S5), and for each, the number of cells without minus (–) was calculated per basin. These numbers were used for the evaluation of species, genus, family, and order taxonomic richness of macrofauna (numbers without brackets in Table S6). Cells with plus (+) also were calculated. This number corresponds to the actual taxonomic richness of the sample (numbers in brackets in Table S6), used for comparison with its size.

Similar calculations were made separately for the pelagial and seafloor (catches of mid-water and benthic trawls), depths ≤200 m (sublittoral and epipelagic zones) and ≥200 m (the shelf edge, bathyal zone and mesopelagic zone), and large taxa—vertebrates (fish and cyclostomates), molluscs, crustaceans, echinoderms and, in general, all invertebrates including tunicates (see Table S6). The resulting numbers were compared between each other and data from Table S1.