DOI: 10.5061/dryad.7d7wm3822
title: Taxonomically revised dataset of acanthomorphic acritarch species of the Doushantuo Formation: dataset for rarefaction, NMDS, and network analysis

description: This is supplementary material for the article entitled "Silicified
 microfossils from the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation along a shelf
 margin-slope-basin transect in Hunan Province, South China, with
 stratigraphical implications" by Ouyang et al. The dataset contains
 (1) taxonomic revisions of published acanthomorph specimens from the
 Doushantuo Formation from 55 previous publications that provide clear,
 pulished, microfossil images and clearly designated stratigraphic
 horizons; and updated occurrence data of Doushantuo acanthomorphic
 acritarchs and certain sphaeromorphic taxa considered as stratigraphically
 useful (i.e., Schizofusa zangwenlongii Grey, 2005) based on the revised
 taxonomy, with each occurrence assigned to a specific fossil collection;
 (2) acritarch relative abundance data from this and six previous
 publications for rarefaction analysis in this study; (3) presence/absence
 data of the Doushantuo acritarchs (based on occurrence data in sheet 1)
 for NMDS and network analysis with R in this study; (4) species
 abbreviations in (3); (5) species loadings generated by the NMDS analysis
 and plotted in Fig. 41.3 of this study.
description: # Taxonomically revised dataset of acanthomorphic acritarch species of the
 Doushantuo Formation; dataset for rarefaction, NMDS, and network analysis
 Give a brief summary of
 dataset contents, contextualized in experimental procedures and results.
 ## Description of the data and file structure The dataset file contains
 five sheets: (1) taxonomic revisions of published acanthomorph specimens
 from the Doushantuo Formation from 55 previous publications that provide
 clear, published, microfossil image and clearly designated stratigraphic
 horizons; and updated occurrence data of Doushantuo acanthomorphic
 acritarchs and certain sphaeromorphic taxa considered as stratigraphically
 useful (i.e., *Schizofusa zangwenlongii* Grey, 2005) based on the revised
 taxonomy, with each occurrence assigned to a specific fossil collection;
 (2) acritarch relative abundance data from this and six previous
 publications for rarefaction analysis in this study; (3) presence/absence
 data of the Doushantuo acritarchs (based on occurrence data in sheet 1)
 for NMDS and network analysis with R in this study; (4) species
 abbreviations in sheets 2 and 3; (5) species loadings generated by the
 NMDS analysis and plotted in Fig. 41.3 of this study. In sheet 1
 ("updated occurrence data"), each row represents a published
 specimen with at least one figure, from references labelled from 2 to 56
 (1 represent the current study). Each column represents an attribute of
 that specimen, including its source of publication (column A) and
 reference number for that publication (column B) used in Table 3 of the
 paper related to this dataset, figure number (column C), published
 taxonomy (column D), locality and sedimentary facies (columns E–G),
 stratigraphic horizon (column H, Member 1/2/3/4 for specimens obtained
 from the Doushantuo Formation in the Yangtze Gorges, Changyang, and
 Zhangjiajie areas, n/a for specimens from other localities), collection ID
 (column I, each collection is defined as an acanthomorphic acritarch
 assemblage from a stratigraphic unit at a specific area reported in an
 independent study, and represents a sample unit in the NMDS or network
 analysis as a vector composed of presence/absence data of all acritarch
 species), current classification (column J), and source of
 re-identification (column K, publication/the current study that reassigned
 the specimen to taxonomy in column J, or n/a if taxonomy of the specimen
 is not changed/cannot be determined). "n/a" represents not
 applicable (not provided by the source publication unless otherwise
 specified above). Sheet 2 ("abundance for rarefaction") provides
 abundance (specimen number) of each acritarch species (column A, full
 names are provided in sheet 4) recovered by one specific study at 11
 sections (columns B–L). Numbers in each cell represents specimen number of
 one species at one section. Data sources can be found in Table 2 and the
 Result section of the paper related to this dataset. This table need to be
 transposed to be directly read and applied in rarefaction analysis in R
 using the rarefy function in the vegan package. Sheet 3 ("presence
 for NMDS & network") provides occurrence data (presence,
 1/absence, 0) of each species (row 1, full names are provided in sheet 4)
 from 83 collections (rows 2–84, definition of a collection see above),
 based on taxonomic identification and update given in sheet 1. This table
 can be directly read and applied in NMDS/network analysis in R (for
 packages and functions that performed these analyses see the Materials and
 Methods section of the paper related to this package. Sheet 4
 ("species abbr") lists species names for abbreviations of
 species in sheets 2 and 3. Sheet 5 ("NMDS species loadings")
 provides loading values of each species on the NMDS 1 and NMDS 2 axis in
 the adopted NMDS result of this study. Plot of the loading numbers is
 shown in Figure 41.3 of the paper related to this dataset. ##
 Sharing/Access information Data sources are provided in caption of Table 3
 and References of the paper related to this dataset. ## Code/Software The
 species loadings data (in sheet 5, NMDS species loadings) are generated
 with R using the metaMDS function from the vegan package in Rstudio (R
 Core Team, 2018), with distance using the Raup-Crick similarity and
 maximum iteration = 100.