Database of facilitative interactions between pairs of coastal marine habitats

Large-scale restoration of habitats is urgently needed to meet international calls for restoration and to reinstate the ecosystem services derived from these habitats. Coastal marine seascapes are comprised of interconnected habitats where their density, diversity and spatial distributions are shaped by the biophysical and ecological processes occurring among them. Cross-habitat facilitation, where processes generated in one habitat benefit another (e.g., wave attenuation, sediment stabilisation), naturally underpins coastal ecosystem development, resilience and expansion but restoration of coastal marine habitats has traditionally focused on single- rather than multi-habitat approaches. We identified over 2100 studies on coastal restoration, yet only 6 (0.002%) addressed restoration of multiple habitats concurrently, and just 3 explicitly aimed to harness cross-habitat facilitation. Using a systematic literature review, we then identified over 200 facilitative interactions between pair..., , , # Database of facilitative interactions between pairs of coastal marine habitats [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dfn2z3575](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.dfn2z3575) To quantify the number of published examples of facilitative interactions occurring between pairs of habitat-forming species, we conducted a literature search of ecological literature published in English in Web of Science on 7 June 2022. The search terms “Topic = facilitat* OR positive interact*” was combined with pairs of each of the following to represent the six habitat-former types: “oyster* OR mussel* OR shellfish*” (shellfish), “saltmarsh* OR salt marsh*”, “seagrass ”, “mangrove”, “macroalga*”, and “coral NOT coralli* (to exclude studies on coralline algae). These paired searches resulted in a total of 1094 publications. This search was revised on 23 August 2022 to include the terms “sea grass*” and “kelp” in the seagrass and macroalgae searches, respectively: “seagrass* OR sea grass* and “macroalga* OR kelp”. This r...