<b>Data and code for</b>: Seagrass meadows sustain fish communities vital for human nutrit

3.5 MB of data and R code from a study comparing fish assemblages across paired coral reef and seagrass meadow habitats along the Western Indian Ocean coastline. The dataset includes cleaned fish transect data, nutrient concentration files, and scripts to reproduce analyses of biomass, abundance, species richness, and micronutrient availability for calcium, iron, zinc, selenium, vitamin A, and omega-3 fatty acids. Author Benjamin Jones published this data package under a CC-BY-4.0 license on figshare in 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling fish biomass and abundance differences between seagrass and coral reef habitats based on underwater visual census transect data.
• Estimating potential micronutrient availability from fish communities using combined biomass estimates and FishBase nutrient concentration data.
• Analyzing fish assemblage composition and community structure using nMDS, PERMANOVA, and SIMPER analyses mentioned in the description.
• Applying double-hurdle modeling to estimate predicted micronutrient support for key fishery species identified from regional small-scale fisheries landings.

Strengths

• Includes R code for a complete reproducible workflow from data cleaning to figure generation.
• Data collection is standardized using 100 m² underwater visual census transects.
• Analysis covers six micronutrients: calcium, iron, zinc, selenium, vitamin A, and omega-3 fatty acids.
• Geographic coverage spans three countries/regions: Kenya, Tanzania/Zanzibar, and Mozambique.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Micronutrient estimates represent potential ecological availability, not realized dietary intake, as noted in the description.

Provenance

Source

figshare, author Benjamin Jones.

Collection Method

Fish communities surveyed using 25 × 4 m underwater visual census transects.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-26 11:27:37; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Western Indian Ocean coastline, spanning Kenya, Tanzania/Zanzibar, and Mozambique.