Dataset of biofouling epibionts on microalgae compiled from literature and environmental variables from open access databases

Macroalgae are increasingly studied for their critical contributions to coastal ecosystems, their potential to mitigate climate change, and their promise as a sustainable food source. While wild macroalgae host diverse epiphytic and invertebrate epibiont communities that enhance biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, biofouling epibionts on farmed macroalgae can negatively impact growth, physiology, and product quality. Although an increasing number of longitudinal studies are trying to establish the drivers of macroalgae biofouling, localized approaches are lacking sufficient contrasts in environmental conditions to reveal macroecological patterns in epibiont occurrence. To gain these contrasts, we analyze data on macroalgae and epibiont taxonomy, study location, and environmental conditions that we have compiled from a systematic literature review and from the Marine Copernicus and NASA OBPG databases of marine data. Our results show that 58.18% of macroalgae epibiont studies focus o..., , , # Dataset of biofouling epibionts on microalgae compiled from literature and environmental variables from open access databases

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.sxksn03d8](10.5061/dryad.sxksn03d8)

## Description of the data and file structure

Author: [[e-mail]](mailto:[e-mail]) (phd student, Marbec, France)

Supervisor: Dr Sofie Spatharis, senior lecturer at Glasgow University

The first file provided (env_biblio_5000), is the one used for model computation. It was built using a list of epibionts observations from the literature, textual information about the sampling site, taxonomical enrichment using WoRMS website, and environmental parameters obtained from Copernicus Marine data center and NASA OBPG website.

The second file (Taxo_ok8) contains the same list of epibionts observations from the literature, textual information about the sampling site, taxonomical enrichment using WoRMS website, and is regularly called throughout the script f...,