Phytoplankton species abundance and related environmental data in the surface waters of the LTER-MC site (Gulf of Naples, Mediterranean Sea), years 1984-2010

Along with long-term trends and interannual variability, time series of marine phytoplankton data offer a good opportunity to understand plankton succession and community assembly rules and their relationships with environmental variables. At the coastal Mediterranean site LTER MareChiara (LTER-MC), in the Gulf of Naples, regular plankton sampling performed since 1984 may allow extracting robust ecological signals out of the noise of the considerable environmental variability of the site. Here we present data on the temporal distribution of the 87 most frequent taxa identified in 917 samples collected in the surface waters of the LTER-MC site in the period 1984-2010 along with environmental data collected simultaneously.