Tropical South America Diatom Database (TSADB)

Determining the mechanisms of community assembly forms the foundation of
biogeography and community ecology. Studies of the biodiversity and
distribution of Neotropical macro-organisms have revealed the roles of
environmental, spatial, and historical factors in structuring communities
at different spatial and temporal scales, but the role of these factors
play for species and communities on microorganisms are still poorly known.
Diatoms are a very species-rich group of algae, disperse widely, and
sensitive to environmental variation due to their position in the base of
aquatic food webs. Here, we present the Tropical South American Diatom
Database (TSADB) which contains geographical and ecological information of
species across lentic and lotic environments, including predictors that
describe local (limnological) and regional (geo-climatic) factors. The
database can be used to tackle fundamental questions in macroecology,
including metacommunity ecology and biogeography theories that form the
foundation for better understanding the rapid environmental change the
tropical regions are experiencing. The TSADB includes diatom taxa from 437
samples in 326 sites containing distributed across 26 regions (0 to 5,070
m a.s.l, and between 8°N–35°S; 58–90°W). In addition, long-term,
diatom-based paleolimnological records are presented as a complementary
tool for identifying regions with available modern and paleo-datasets for
a long-term limnological change observatory in the tropical Americas. We
describe the TSADB structure and functionality, and R codes for data
manipulation and visualization. Each of the 26 study regions is
represented by 3 data matrices: sampling site information, environmental
variables (limnology, climate, and landscape), and diatom community data
(relative abundance or presence/absence). Access to data and future
additions is through publicly available repositories and a guide to
contributors, respectively, providing opportunities for complementing
existing databases on diatoms and allowing optimal usage of TSADB by
scientist including diatomists, limnologists, aquatic ecologists, and
natural resource managers.