COI mtDNA sequences for trematodes from fish collections across the Northern Line Islands and French Polynesia archipelagos collected between 2009 and 2023

Abstract

The loss of biological diversity is considered one of the principal environmental challenges of the 21st century, and there are hints that this massive reorganization of food webs could affect how parasites are transmitted among hosts. Parasites are often hidden and can be easy to overlook, but they are ecologically important and ubiquitous - so it is important to understand whether we should expect more or fewer of them as biodiversity disappears. Does biodiversity loss increase the abundance of parasites by eroding natural "checks and balances" on transmission? Or does it decrease parasite abundance by removing the free-living biodiversity on which parasites depend? Answers to these questions are urgently needed if we are to mitigate or prevent an uptick in parasite transmission for ecosystems experiencing biodiversity loss.

In a joint collaborative research project among the University of Washington, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, and California State University Monterey Bay, we created a parasite dataset of unprecedented size and taxonomic resolution. We sampled parasites of coral reef fishes from 19 replicate islands in the central equatorial Pacific to study how biodiversity and parasite burden covary.

This data set contains COI mtDNA sequence accession numbers, collection locations, and life stages for trematodes from the family Microscaphidiidae and Paramphistomatidae from fish collections across the Northern Line Islands and French Polynesia archipelagos collected between 2009 and 2023. Specifically this data set represents 87 Microscaphidiidae samples from the Northern Line Islands and 132 Paramphistomatidae from French Polynesia.

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/953401