Data generated within the study entitled: "The biodiversity and metabolic functioning of alternative macroalgal habitats on Mediterranean rocky reefs".

These data was used to analyze the metabolic functioning and the hosted biodiversity of alternative habitats (macroalgal forests and shrubs assemblages) in shallow coastal systems over time scales of months. The "Datasets_UnivariateAnalyses" were used to analyze differences in the metabolic functioning (hourly and daily fluxes of dissolved oxygen, dissolved inorganic carbon, and changes on total alkalinity used to estimate calcification/dissolution rates) between pristine (macroalgal forests) and urban (shrub-like assemblages) benthic communities. In addition, data in this dataset was used to analyze the abundance and richness of vagile invertebrates hosted by the alternative habitats and the biomass of associated producers and consumers.The "Dataset_Invertebrate_abundance was used to analyze differences in the structure of vagile invertebrate assemblages hosted by the alternative habitats through a multivariate analyses of variance (PERMANOVA)The "Datasets_AbioticVariables were used to calculate mean and standard errors of abiotic variables measured during the study (seawater temperature, pH and nutrients).