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/

Port Hacking NRS is located 3 nm offshore at 100 m depth over fine muddy sand, near the major city of Sydney, New South Wales (population 4.3 million). This is a sub-tropical to temperate location with strong seasonality. The site is just downstream of the EAC separation zone and is impacted by the dynamics of flow of EAC and its eddy field. The water column is very well mixed between May and Sept (although the duration of this mixing has decreased in recent years (Ingleton, T. unpublished observation)) and highly stratified between December and March. Upwelling can occur via eddies or wind driven slope water intrusions. There is a long historical oceanographic dataset from this site (with intermittent gaps in certain parameters) dating back to 1953.

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: Port Hacking National Reference Station (NRS), New South Wales, 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_phb