Assessing cryptic reef diversity of colonizing marine invertebrates using Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) deployed at coral reef sites in Timor-Leste from 2012 to 2...

The data described here, including photographs, genetic sequences, and specimen information, were collected by the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) from Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures, or ARMS, moored for two years at fixed climate survey sites located on hard bottom shallow water (< 15 m) habitats in Timor-Leste. Climate sites were established in Timor-Leste in October 2012 to establish ecological baselines for climate change by measuring multiple features of the coral reef environment (in addition to the data described herein) over time.

Three ARMS units were typically deployed by SCUBA divers at each survey site. Each ARMS unit, constructed in-house by CREP, consisted of 23 cm x 23 cm gray, type 1 PVC plates stacked in alternating series of 4 open and 4 obstructed layers and attached to a base plate of 35 cm x 45 cm, which was affixed to the reef. Upon recovery, each ARMS unit was encapsulated, brought to the surface, and disassembled and processed. Disassembled plates were photographed to document recruited sessile organisms, scraped clean and preserved in 95% ethanol for DNA processing. Recruited motile organisms were sieved into 3 size fractions: 2 mm, 500 µm, and 100 µm. The 500 µm and 100 µm fractions were bulked and also preserved in 95% ethanol for DNA processing. The 2 mm fraction was sorted into morphospecies, photographed, and identified to the lowest taxonomic identification possible. The plate photographs, sequences generated from the DNA metabarcoding of the scrapings and the 500- and 100-µm fractions, specimen photographs, and specimen identifications are included in the ARMS dataset. The data can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive.

ARMS are used by CREP to assess and monitor cryptic reef diversity across the Pacific. Developed in collaboration with the Census of Marine Life (CoML) Census of Coral Reef Ecosystems (CReefs), ARMS are designed to mimic the structural complexity of a reef and attract/collect colonizing marine invertebrates. The key innovation of the ARMS method is that biodiversity is sampled over precisely the same surface area in the exact same manner. Thus, the use of ARMS is a systematic, consistent, and comparable method for monitoring the marine cryptobiota community over time.

The use of ARMS is a systematic, consistent, and comparable method for monitoring the marine cryptobiota community in coral reef ecosystems over time.

The Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) at NOAA Fisheries is conducting in-situ climate monitoring across the U.S. Pacific Islands Region. Climate monitoring provides a comprehensive view of climate change impacts on coral reef ecosystems and helps identify areas of resilience and vulnerability. The key indicators used to identify and monitor climate-driven trends include 1) thermal stress caused by changes in sea temperature, 2) ocean acidification resulting from changes in carbonate chemistry, and 3) ecological impacts by collecting data on coral growth rates and community structure to understand the impacts of thermal stress and ocean acidification on the ecosystem.

This particular dataset for Timor-Leste is part of a 3-year project ("Climate, Biodiversity and Fisheries in the Coral Triangle: Embracing the E in Ecosystem Approaches to Fisheries Management") implemented by CREP. This project was funded by NOAA's Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Regional Development Mission Asia (RDMA) as part of the U.S. Coral Triangle Initiative, with additional support from the Coral Triangle Support Partnership and USAID Philippines.

The goal of the project was to build on CREP's expertise to provide tools and information about climate change, ocean acidification, and their impacts on biodiversity and fisheries that could inform and be incorporated into an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM) for the Philippines. CREP worked with local governments, communities, and NGOs to build science capacity by establishing robust observing capabilities and providing hands-on training to initiate collection of climate science information for the Verde Island Passage in the Philippines that can be used toward adaptive EAFM.

In 2011, NOAA and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Timor-Leste Mission formed a 5-year bi-lateral partnership agreement from 2012 to 2016, in support of the Government of Timor-Leste—particularly the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF)—by addressing significant information gaps in their nearshore marine ecosystems. Specifically, MAF asked NOAA to address the following questions:

1.Where are the nearshore marine resources?

2.What are the nearshore marine resources?

3.How are they changing over time and what threats are potentially causing these changes?

4.What approaches are needed to manage and conserve the nearshore marine resources?

With financial support from USAID and in-kind support from the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (CRCP), the NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) conducted baseline ecosystem assessment surveys to inform ecosystem-based management planning in Timor-Leste. The primary activities conducted by NOAA to answer these questions included:

1.satellite mapping of nearshore habitats,

2.conducting coral reef ecosystem assessments,

3.establishing ecological baselines for climate change, and

4.building management capacity by developing a spatial data framework

The biodiversity data described herein resulted from the third activity to establish ecological baselines for climate change.

Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center. 2017. Interdisciplinary baseline ecosystem assessment surveys to inform ecosystem-based management planning in Timor-Leste: Final Report. Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, PIFSC Special Publication, SP-17-002, 234 p. https://doi.org/10.7289/V5/SP-PIFSC-17-002.

As the survey methods described and used herein are also implemented as part of the NOAA Pacific Reef Assessment and Monitoring Program (Pacific RAMP)—an ecosystem-scale interdisciplinary coral reef monitoring program—the data from Timor-Leste are directly comparable to and informed by data collected by NOAA-CREP throughout the U.S. Pacific Islands and Territories. Furthermore, the methods used for establishing ecological baselines for climate change in Timor-Leste (Chapter 4) are being adopted and implemented at 21 sites across eight member states of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission within the Western Pacific (WESTPAC) region. These data provide a foundation for comparing the ecological baselines under current and future stresses associated with climate change in the Coral Triangle region.

This record was re-published with a new data file in 2021.

Three types of data are included with this dataset: A) specimen data, B) images, and C) sequences.

A) Specimen retrieval data (CSV file) includes metadata for each ARMS unit (where, deployment / retrieval date) and individual specimens from the 2mm fraction, identified to the lowest taxonomic level possible along with a count. Each column is described in the entities and attributes section.

B) Images are organized by IMAGES_SITE and IMAGES_TAXAGROUP.

Photographs in the IMAGES_SITE folder are organized by the original climate survey site name (folders TIM-01 to TIM-10), and within each site folder are three sets of images:

1) PLATES folder. Photographs taken of the 9 ARMS plates (tops and bottoms) as the recovered ARMS units were processed (considered 'data'). Images are organized by ARMS unit (A-D), and named by <SITE>_<YEAR RECOVERED>_<ARMS UNIT>_<SEQUENTIAL 3-DIGIT NUMBER>.jpg Photographs themselves include a label of each plate.

2) SPECIES folder. Specimens that were recovered and identified as part of the 2-mm fraction (considered 'data'), organized by folders that correspond to the SAMPLE_LABEL in the CSV file. Images are named by <SAMPLE_LABEL>_<SEQUENTIAL 3-DIGIT NUMBER>.jpg

3) DEPLOY and RECOVER folders. Photographs taken during the deployment and recovery of ARMS units, which were not consistently captured at each site and are only for reference purposes.

Photographs in the IMAGES_TAXAGROUP folder are specimen photographs (copied from SPECIES folder) that have been cross-indexed and organized by the TAXA GROUP (e.g., anemone, crab, flatworm, isopod), which corresponds to the Taxa Group in the CSV file. Images are named <TAXAGROUP>_<SCIENTIFIC NAME>_<SAMPLE_LABEL>_<SEQUENCE NUMBER>.jpg

C) Files contained in the SEQUENCES folder include the FASTQ files generated during the DNA metabarcoding process of the 500- and 100-µm fractions and scrapings. Files are named by <SITE><ARMS UNIT>_<FRACTION SIZE>_<SEQUENCE NUMBER>_<L001>_<RUN NUMBER>_<001>.fastq

While every effort has been made to ensure that these data are accurate and reliable within the limits of the current state of the art, NOAA cannot assume liability for any damages caused by errors or omissions in the data, nor as a result of the failure of the data to function on a particular system. NOAA makes no warranty, expressed or implied, nor does the fact of distribution constitute such a warranty.

Timor-Leste

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NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) Data Sharing Recommendations, version 9.0 updated August 12, 2015:

CREP welcomes the opportunity to collaborate on research issues contributing to the scientific basis for better management of marine ecosystems. CREP has a very diverse set of field activities that generates large volumes of data using an array of data collection protocols.

The following recommendations are for your consideration as you use this data:

1) Data analyses should take all field exigencies into account. The most effective way to do this would be active collaboration with CREP principal investigators.

2) In all presentations, product releases, or publications using data generated by CREP, proper acknowledgement of both CREP and the individuals responsible for data collection is expected. Citing the DOI (if available) is preferred, a non-DOI example is listed below.

3) If you collect or generate data for the same study areas, CREP requests that you share relevant information on complimentary data collections.

4) Those receiving data are strongly urged to inform the CREP Data Management Team of any errors and discrepancies that are discovered during the course of using these data. They are further urged to bring to the attention of the Team all problems and difficulties encountered in using these data. This information is necessary in order to improve the collections and to facilitate more efficient and economical data processing and retrieval. The users are asked to supply copies of any missing data that may be located, and to provide information as to significant subsets and special aggregations of data that are developed in using the material provided.

Example citation:

"This publication makes use of data products provided by the Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP), Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (PIFSC), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with funding support from the United States Agency for International Development. The analysis and interpretations presented here are solely that of the current authors.”

Data can be accessed online via the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) Ocean Archive.

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Please cite NOAA Coral Reef Ecosystem Program (CREP) when using the data.

Suggested citation:

Coral Reef Ecosystem Program; Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center (2017). Assessing cryptic reef diversity of colonizing marine invertebrates using Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) deployed at coral reef sites in Timor-Leste from 2012 to 2014. NOAA's National Center for Environmental Information, https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/inport/item/46159.

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CSV: Microsoft Access

Images: PIFSC network/file system \\picmakai\optical\OPTICAL\

Sequences: Sample libraries were pooled and sequenced on an Illumina MiSeq platform, and the Illumina reads were parsed into FASTQ files sorted by index.

All species identifications are made visually by a trained analyst and subsequently reviewed by a taxonomic expert or through molecular processing for accuracy.

Images are taken of the plates and specimens first with a label in the photograph, and then without.

Sample libraries were validated by visualization on an Agilent 2100 BioAnalyzer.

All ARMS units that are recovered are disassembled, photographed, and sorted by size. Taxonomic classification occurs for materials greater than 2 mm. The research and development of the genetic analysis of ARMS samples is being done in collaboration with partners and data currently exists for a subset of the dataset. ARMS that were deployed were not recovered due to logistical constraints at 2 of the 10 original climate sruvey sites, or could not be found when divers returned to the site.

ARMS sample biodiversity over precisely the same surface area in the exact same manner. Thus, the use of ARMS is a systematic, consistent, and comparable method for monitoring the cryptobiota community overtime. Three units are deployed at each site to allow for replicate measurements. Divers typically record ARMS metadata into the master Microsoft Access database within a few days of the field operations and/or ARMS processing. QA/QC procedures are typically completed during the field mission.

The data entered in the MS Access database is quality controlled following data entry.

NOAA IRC and NOAA Fisheries ITS resources and assets. The MS Access database is stored on the PIFSC network and regularly backed up by ITS.

Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures (ARMS) field, laboratory, and analytical methods used for ARMS in Timor-Leste are described below. ARMS units were deployed for 2 years then collected to be both visually analyzed as well as genetically analyzed.