Benthic foraminiferal relative abundances, ecological groups and benthic foraminiferal oxygen index (EBFOI) for the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 18 to MIS 32 interval of IODP Site 339-U1387, Gulf of Cadiz

This dataset contains benthic foraminiferal assemblage data and reconstructed bottom-water oxygenation from IODP Site U1387 (36°48.32′N, 07°43.13′W; 559 m water depth), on the middle slope of the Faro Drift in the Gulf of Cadiz. It was produced to reconstruct how bottom-water oxygenation at the site responded to changes in the Mediterranean Outflow Water across Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 18 to 32, in the Early to Middle Pleistocene. Reported variables are the relative abundances of benthic foraminiferal species, the elevated-epibenthic, deep-infaunal and porcelaneous ecological groups, the absolute abundance of Planulina ariminensis, the Enhanced Benthic Foraminiferal Oxygen Index (EBFOI) and reconstructed dissolved oxygen. Species were grouped by microhabitat and oxygen preference to compute the EBFOI, which was converted to dissolved oxygen (ml/l) using the transfer function of Kranner et al. (2022), adapted by Schmiedl et al. (2023). The age model is based on correlation of the planktonic d18O record of Globigerina bulloides from Site U1387 to IODP Site U1385, which is aligned to the LR04 benthic isotope stack (Lisiecki and Raymo, 2005). Ages are also given on the Probstack time scale (Ahn et al., 2017). Because the oxygen index and the Planulina ariminensis abundance respond to different features of the bottom environment, the record can be reused both for oxygenation and for bottom-current studies.