Mesophotic Zone

When extracting data from this portal for publication, please cite: Bongaerts P, Perez-Rosales G, Radice VZ, Eyal G, Gori A, Gress E, Hammerman NM, Hernandez-Agreda A, Laverick J, Muir P, Pinheiro H, Pyle RL, Rocha L, Turner JA, Booker R (2019) Mesophotic.org: a repository for scientific information on mesophotic ecosystems. Database 2019:baz140. d... oi.org/10.1093/database/baz140 Collate available research focusing on the mesophotic depth zone, and make it accessible through a single webportal. Act as an independent platform and shared resource for and by the mesophotic research community. The primary entities in the database are scientific publications, for which standard citation data and the full-text contents are indexed. In addition, the following metadata are manually curated (and validated by at least 3 editorial members): Mesophotic: true / false. Indicates whether the publications presents data from, or presents a discussion on, the mesophotic depth range (true), or whether it is focused on another depth range (e.g. shallow or deep-sea) but relevant to mesophotic studies (false), and therefore included in the database. The mesophotic depth range is defined to be from 30-150 m. Mesophotic Coral Ecosystem (tropical & subtropical) : true / false. Indicates whether the publications presents data from, or presents a discussion on, a mesophotic coral reef ecosystem (MCE) as characterized by the following definition (altered from the Hinderstein et al. 2010 definition): characterized by the presence of photosynthetically active corals, algae and associated communities at depths ranging from 30 to 150 m in tropical and subtropical regions (true), or whether it is focused on an ecosystem that does not fall under this definition (false). The altered definition is to reflect the fact despite the presence of light-dependent corals, they are often a very small component of the overall ecosystem (particularly at lower mesophotic depths); additionally, while photosynthetically-active, the dependence on light may be ...Read More