Collection of symbiotic copepods associated with Caribbean invertebrates

The diversity and distribution of Caribbean symbiotic copepods are still poorly investigated. The symbiotic copepods are currently known on 4% of potential hosts of the Caribbean invertebrates and reported on 47% of the total number of species of scleractinians, 9% of octocorals, 3% of echinoderms and less than 1% of sponges (Korzhavina et al., 2019). This dataset includes information about a collection of partly processed samples of symbiotic copepods living on Caribbean invertebrates (mainly sponges, echinoderms, and corals). Therefore, the purpose of this collection is to explore diversity, ecology and evolution of copepod living in symbiosis with invertebrate hosts. The collection includes information about partly sorted samples of symbiotic copepods living on diverse Caribbean invertebrate hosts identified to different taxonomic levels (47 species, 38 genera, 28 families, 13 orders, 6 classes, and 3 phyla). The hosts were collected by SCUBA diving in 63 coral reef sites at depths to 40 m at Saint Eustatius (in 2015), Curaçao (in 2017), southwest and northwest of Cuba and Bonaire (in 2019). The collection is including tissues subsamples as well and underwater photographs of the hosts. All samples are preserved in 95% ethanol. The methods of sampling are described in Ivanenko et al. (2017, 2018) and Shelyakin et al. (2018).