Title

Habitat-forming seaweeds in Japan (fucoids and temperate kelps)

Names of authors

Naoki H. Kumagai, Hiroya Yamano, Masahiko Fujii & Yasuhiro Yamanaka

Affiliations and addresses of the authors

Naoki H. Kumagai
Center for Environmental Biology and Ecosystem Studies, National Institute for Environmental Studies
16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8506, Japan

Hiroya Yamano
Center for Environmental Biology and Ecosystem Studies, National Institute for Environmental Studies
16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8506, Japan

Masahiko Fujii
Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University
North 10 West 5, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-0810, Japan

Yasuhiro Yamanaka
Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University
North 10 West 5, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-0810, Japan

Communicating author

Naoki H. Kumagai
E-mail: nh.kuma@gmail.com
Tel: +81-29-850-2284
Fax: +81-29-850-2284

Abstract

This paper describes the flora of habitat-forming seaweeds ( fucoids and temperate kelps) at 7,673 sites of the Japanese coast encompassing its warm to cold temperate zone, recorded from 1887 to 2014. The data set includes 86 species (21,168 presence and 20,845 absence records), compiled from 355 literature sources, most of which were written in Japanese and published as grey literature in local journals or individual reports. Scientific names were consolidated under currently-accepted nomenclature based on Algaebase (http://www.algaebase.org). The data set compiled the seaweed flora at each study site each year, the geographical location and the scientific names. Additionally, three supporting data sets were created respectively including name of each site, synonyms of the seaweeds, and the corresponding literature list. This rich collection of data can be used to study the biogeography and long-term changes of particular species and the diversity of habitat-forming seaweeds of the Japanese coast.

Keywords

• biodiversity
• marine ecosystem
• climate change
• long-term monitoring
• canopy-forming seaweeds
• macroalgae
• Fucales
• Laminariales
• Ecklonia
• Sargassum

Introduction

Like terrestrial vegetation, seaweeds such as fucoids and kelps are key habitat forming species that play a pivotal role in rocky coastal communities of temperate zones, providing food, shelter from predators and nursery sites to many marine species (Bertness et al. 2001). However, seaweed distributions are changing in response to contemporary climate change by expanding and contracting their cold and warm boundaries, respectively, as the ocean warms, reflecting the key role of temperature in the phenology of seaweeds (Breeman 1988). This situation is unfolding also in Japan, where recent range contractions and expansions of habitat forming seaweeds have been reported for, respectively, temperate and tropical species in relation to rising sea temperatures (Tanaka et al. 2012); a pattern that seems likely to continue into the future (Takao et al. 2015). Such changes are likely to have cascading effects on biodiversity, ecosystem function and biogeochemical cycling.

Historical records of biodiversity and distributions of species are a primary source of evidence for assessing global biodiversity and ecological responses to environmental changes including anthropogenic climate change. In Japan, the seaweed flora has been historically well surveyed by professional researchers, expert naturalists and national and local fishery agencies. However, most of these surveys were described in Japanese and published in a variety of local journals or individual reports, like as in freshwater vegetation (e.g., Nishihiro et al. 2014). To make this rich and important source of information available to the scientific community and the society in general, we compiled a comprehensive dataset that comprise historical records of the Japanese habitat-forming seaweeds. We collected literature that included distribution records using Web-based searches and asking professional researchers for target species. The datasets were constructed to describe the seaweed flora throughout Japanese coasts across years (1887-2014), and summarize the species name and its synonyms used in the studies. Although a few distribution databases of Japanese habitat-forming seaweeds do exist (28 species of fucoids: Yoshida 1983; 10 species of kelps: Terawaki et al. 1991 in Japanese with English abstract; five species of kelps: Terada et al. 2013 in Japanese), these involve a limited number of species and/or are currently outdated.

List of data files

• FloraDB.txt
• LocationDB.txt
• SpeciesDB.txt
• LiteratureDB.txt

Metadata

1. TITLE

Habitat-forming seaweeds in Japan (fucoids and temperate kelps)

2. CONTRIBUTORS

A. Principal investigators

Naoki H. Kumagai
Center for Environmental Biology and Ecosystem Studies, National Institute for Environmental Studies
16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8506, Japan

Hiroya Yamano
Center for Environmental Biology and Ecosystem Studies, National Institute for Environmental Studies
16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8506, Japan

Masahiko Fujii
Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University
North 10 West 5, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-0810, Japan

Yasuhiro Yamanaka
Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University
North 10 West 5, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-0810, Japan

B. Data set owner and contact information

Naoki H. Kumagai
Center for Environmental Biology and Ecosystem Studies, National Institute for Environmental Studies
Address : 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8506, Japan
Tel : +81-29-850-2284
Fax : +81-29-850-2284
E-mail : nh.kuma@gmail.com

3. GEOGRAPHIC AND TEMPORAL COVERAGE

The study sites spread over a geographic area ranging from 20.4242 to 45.5230°N in latitude and from 122.9420 to 153.9755°E in longitude (geodetic system: WGS84) and cover a temporal span from 1887 to 2014. The specific geographical positions of the individual sites and the year each record was surveyed are listed in FloraDB.

4. METHODS

A. Taxonomic screening

This study focuses on seaweed species that form the canopy of coastal rocky-reef communities, mainly within the warm to cold temperate zone (Spalding et al. 2007) of Japan: we selected Phaeophyceae that include Fucales (fucoids, mainly Sargassum spp.) and Laminariales (kelps) inhabiting the temperate zone (Undaria spp., Ecklonia spp., Agarum oharaense, Saccharina japonica and S. japonica var. religiosa). The other 20 or more species of Laminariales found only in the subarctic zone (Hokkaido) were therefore excluded from this study. Laminariales in the northern part of Japan, including the subarctic zone, have been nevertheless compiled under the Environmental Research and Technology Development Fund (S9) project of the Japanese Ministry of the Environment. We consolidated all existing synonymous names for each listed seaweed species and used currently-accepted nomenclature based on Algaebase (Guiry and Guiry 2016). We included Eisenia and Eckloniopsis as synonymous of Ecklonia, according the recent revision by Rothman et al. (2015). Although Ecklonia kurome was differentiated from Ecklonia cava as an independent species, both species are often misidentified, particularly in comprehensive surveys, because of the morphological and genetic overlaps between E. cava and E. kurome (Tanaka et al. 2007). Unlike terrestrial vegetation, no introduced species is known for the focal taxa concerning this study in Japan. Overall, we registered a total of 86 species including two varieties. The names and synonyms of all seaweeds are listed in SpeciesDB

B. Literature collection

As a first step, we searched the internet for literature using Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/) , CiNii (http://ci.nii.ac.jp/en) , and ISI (http://apps.webofknowledge.com) with the key words "seaweeds, flora, or survey(s)", for scientific and Japanese name(s) of each study species, and the name of each prefecture in Japan. We conducted the search between April 2013 and Jul 2016. Next, we obtained further information on the species of interest by sourcing the references cited in the literature obtained from the initial search and by asking professional researchers with expertise on the species. Additionally, questionable description(s) in the literature (e.g., geographically isolated presence records) were confirmed by contacting the author(s) or, in its absence, an expert researcher.

Though herbarium specimen records provide strong evidence of species occurrence and robust species identification, caution should nevertheless be taken regarding their localities because of the possibility of specimens collected after being washed ashore, a potential situation especially affecting Sargassum species known have been transported distances up to thousand kilometers by the Kuroshio Current (Komatsu et al., 2007). For this reason, we limited records of algal specimens in herbariums to about 2.3% of the total data set, mostly derived from the monograph of Yoshida (1983).

After revising all bibliographical data from the collected literature, we compiled those papers containing the data on seaweeds in LiteratureDB. The location (latitude and longitude) and the water depth of each site were obtained from the description in the Materials and Methods of each reference. Where no geographic coordinate or map of the study sites were provided, we obtained their approximate coordinates from Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/, Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA), using the site names and descriptions provided by the authors. Whenever the sites could not be found in Google Maps, we sourced Japanese publically available maps instead (e.g. Mapion (in Japanese); http://www.mapion.co.jp/, Mapion Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan). Most of the sites were successfully located because Japanese lands, particularly around the coastal line, are well discriminated by local names. The geographical location for 85% of the sites was identified with an accuracy of 1 km. The prefectural and regional names of sites for which flora records were obtained are listed with their corresponding geographical location.

The number of records changed year by year and has increased significantly from the late 1960s due to an increase in comprehensive surveys (Fig. 1). There was an increase in the number of records in 1989 when 4762 locations were surveyed under the National Survey on the Natural Environment by the Japanese Ministry of Environment. Comprehensive surveys of seaweeds were also conducted as a part of the designation planning of marine protected areas mainly during the 1960s and 1970s. Surveys covering the western Japanese coasts were held by the Fisheries Agency towards the end of the 1970s. Furthermore, the number of records has reached the maximum over recent years in response to increasing changes in seaweeds communities from the end of the 1990s (e.g., Tanaka et al. 2012). Although our main target area comprised the Japanese temperate and subtropical zones, our data set also includes records for the subarctic zone (Fig. 2).

Fig. 1. Number of records by time period. The comprehensive survey by the National Survey on the Natural Environment (blue bars) conducted by the Japanese Ministry of Environment peaked in 1989 and covers 20.7% of the total records.

Fig. 2. Accumulated number of records per 1 grid pixel.

C. Data verification

Recorded seaweeds names, survey years and months, occurrences, geographical locations, and county and city names were compiled into FloraDB. All of the datasets (LiteratureDB, LocationDB, SpeciesDB, and FloraDB) were manually digitized and checked for typographical errors.

5. DATA STATUS

A. Latest Update

The data set, updated as for 30 Aug 2016, will be periodically updated as new literature becomes available.

6. ACCESSIBILITY

A. License and usage rights

1) Acceptable use. Use of the data set will be restricted to academic, research, educational, government, biodiversity conservation, or other non- profit professional purposes.

2) Citation. Data users should properly cite this data paper in any publications or in the metadata of any derived data products that were produced using the data set. As the metadata and the data set may be updated, the date the data was retrieved should also be included in the citation.

3) Collaboration. Data users are strongly encouraged to consider consultation, collaboration, and/or co-authorship with the authors.

B. Data management and contact person

Name: Naoki H. Kumagai
Affiliation: Center for Environmental Biology and Ecosystem Studies, National Institute for Environmental Studies
Address: 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8506 Japan
Mail: nh.kuma@gmail.com

7. DATA STRUCTURE

A. Data tables

B. Format type

The data tables are formated in ASCII text and tab delimited. "FloraDB.txt" and "SpeciesDB.txt" are in UTF-8 encoded, whereas "LiteratureDB.txt" and "LocationDB.txt" are in Shift-JIS encoded because of including Japanese characters, umlaut or tilde that could cause text encoding problem. To open these files as spread sheets normally, application software that can specify text encoding is needed, such as Apache OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/) and LibreOffice (http://www.libreoffice.org/).

C. Header information

Headers corresponding to variable names (see section 7.D) are included in the first row in the data tables.

D. Variable definitions

The variables are listed in the same order they appear in the data files. The variable names are included as first rows (headers) in the data files. Missing value code "NA" represents the missing or unspecified values. Variable names in FloraDB.txt were formatted according to Darwin Core Archives (Darwin Core Task Group (TDWG) 2009).

8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank Drs Hiromori Shimabukuro, Ryuta Terada and Noboru Murase, who provided valuable advice about taxonomy and distribution of seaweeds. We also thank Drs Shintaro Takao, Jorge García Molinos and Shin-ichiro S. Matsuzaki for their support in discussion for the construction of the paper. We thank Dr. J. García Molinos for polishing English of the initial draft. The comments of the two anonymous reviewers and handling editors helped improving the manuscript. The publication of this data paper was supported by the framework of the "Precise Impact Assessments on Climate Change" of the Program for Risk Information on Climate Change (SOUSEI Program) supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology Japan (MEXT).

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