The Australian Marine Microbial Biodiversity Initiative (AMMBI) provides methodologically standardized, continental scale, temporal phylogenetic amplicon sequencing data describing Bacteria, Archaea and microbial Eukarya assemblages. Sequence data is linked to extensive physical, biological and chemical oceanographic contextual information. Samples are collected monthly to seasonally from multiple depths at seven National Reference Stations (NRS) sites: Darwin Harbour (Northern Territory), Yongala (Queensland), North Stradbroke Island (Queensland), Port Hacking (New South Wales), Maria Island (Tasmania), Kangaroo Island (South Australia), Rottnest Island (Western Australia). The Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) NRS network is described at http://imos.org.au/facilities/nationalmooringnetwork/nrs/

Rottnest Island NRS is located 18 nm offshore and 2.5 nm from Rottnest Island, at a depth of 50 m over sand but surrounded by low relief limestone reef which is predominately covered with macro-algae, mainly Ecklonia spp, on the Western Australia coast, near Perth (population 1.83 million). This is the only NRS situated on the Indian Ocean coastline. This station is heavily impacted by the Leuwin Current (LC), which delivers warm but less saline waters southward. The LC is strongly affected by ENSO and IOD events. The prevailing winds and current direction leads to coastal suppression of upwelling along the Western Australian coast throughout most of the year, and consequently sea surface temperatures of up to 4–5?°C warmer than upwelling systems at similar latitudes elsewhere on the globe2. There is an historical oceanographic dataset from this site (with intermittent gaps in certain parameters) dating back to 1951.

Site details from Brown, M. V. et al. Continental scale monitoring of marine microbiota by the Australian Marine Microbial Biodiversity Initiative. Sci. Data 5:180130 doi: 10.1038/sdata.2018.130 (2018).

Site location: Rottnest Island National Reference Station (NRS), Western Australia, Australia

Note on data download/processing:

Data downloaded from Australian Microbiome Initiative via Bioplatforms Australia Data Portal on 17 June 2022. The search filter applied to download data from Bioplatforms Australia Data portal are stored in the Darwin Core property (identificationRemarks). Taxonomy is assigned according to the taxonomic database (SILVA 138) and method (Sklearn) which is stored in the Darwin Core Extension

DNA derived data property (otu_db). Prefix were removed from the taxonomic names as shown in the example (e.g. d__Bacteria to Bacteria). Scientific name is assigned to the valid name available from the highest taxonomic rank.

This collection is published as Darwin Core Occurrence, so the event level measurements need to be replicated for every occurrence. Instead of data replication, the event level eMoF data are made available separately at https://www.marine.csiro.au/data/services/obisau/emof_export.cfm?ipt_resource=bioplatforms_mm_nrs_rot