Temporal Drivers of Abundance and Community Structure of Scyphozoan Jellyfish

This is the raw (unprocessed) datasets for scyphozoan jellyfish abundance (catch per unit effort: no. of individual/net) and environmental water parameters (salinity, temperature, pH, DO, turbidity, current speed) collected during the monthly sampling routine (June 2010-December 2011) and 24-hour (diel) sampling series conducted during the dry period of the southwest monsoon (June-July 2011) and wet period of the northeast monsoon (November-December 2011) at the Klang Strait, Malaysia.

Jellyfish samples were collected during daylight flood tide occasion of the full moon on a monthly basis for 19 months (June 2010-December 2011). Sampling times were fixed at approximately six hours during the flood tide. To investigate the effect of rainfall (dry/wet period), moon phases, diel cycle and tide cycle on scyphozoan abundance, two additional sampling series were conducted on the driest period (June – July, SWM) and wettest period (November – December, NEM) of the year based on past data (Malaysian Meteorological Department). At each dry and wet period, jellyfish were collected at approximately 6-hourly sampling intervals over a 24-hour cycle every week for a month. The samplings thus covered all daily tides in the tide cycle (two flood tides and two ebb tides), day and night (diel cycle), and four consecutive moon phases (1st quarter moon, full moon, 3rd quarter moon, new moon). The number of bag nets (as replicates) set during samplings were highly dependent on weather condition and ranged from 8 to 20 nets per sampling occasion. All jellyfish from the bag nets were instantly examined and photographed in the field for identification using the keys and descriptions of Rizman-Idid et al. (2016), Jarms and Morandini (2019), and Syazwan et al. (2020b).

Physical water parameters were obtained monthly at the surface layer (0.5 - 1.0 m depth from the surface) of the water column during day time (monthly sampling series), and at approximately two-hourly intervals over 24 hours (diel sampling series).

Legends: SWM = southwest monsoon; IN = inter-monsoon; NEM = northeast monsoon; D = dry period; W = wet period; 1Q = 1st quarter moon; FM = full moon; 3Q = 3rd quarter moon; NM = new moon; D = day; N = night; F = flood tide; E = ebb tide