Environmental observations and infected host and dinospore counts in Salt Pond, Falmouth, Massachusetts, USA from 2018 through 2019

Abstract

Salt Pond is a shallow, seasonally stratified coastal salt pond located in Falmouth, Massachusetts, USA and it is proximal to the labs at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). This estuarine system is tidally influenced by Vineyard Sound and receives inputs of freshwater primarily from groundwater. Seasonal abiotic factors and nutrient availability in the seasonally stratified water column influence the growth and abundance of diverse microbial taxa within this system, providing an ideal setting to study syndinian parasites and host diversity temporally and across oxygen gradients. Salt Pond has anoxic waters that come within 2-3 meters of the water surface in summer and bottom waters that become increasingly sulfidic due to bacterial sulfate reduction as seasonal stratification intensifies.

For a complete list of measurements, refer to the full dataset description in the supplemental file 'Dataset_description.pdf'. The most current version of this dataset is available at: https://www.bco-dmo.org/dataset/805612