Atlas of modern organic-walled dinoflagellate cyst distribution

This Atlas summarises the global distribution of extant organic-walled dinoflagellate cysts in the form of 61 maps illustrated by the relative abundance of individual cyst taxa,in recent marine sediments from the Atlantic Ocean and adjacent basins, the Antarctic region (South Atlantic, southwestern, Pacific and southern Indian Ocean sections),. the Arabian Sea and the northwestern Pacific. This synthesis is based on the integration of literature sources together with data from 835 marine surface sediments prepared on a comparable methodology and taxonomy. The relationships between distribution patterns of cyst species and the surface-water parameters (temperature, salinity, phosphate and nitrate concentrations) are documented with graphs depicting the relative abundance of species in relation to seasonal and annual values of the above mentioned parameters at the sample sites. Two ordination techniques (detrended correspondence analysis and canonical correspondence analysis) have been carried out to statistically illustrate the relationships between species distribution and sea-surface conditions. Results have been compared with previously published records and an overview of the ecological significance of each individual species is presented. Characterisations of selected environments as well as a discussion about how additional processes such as preservation and transport could have affected the present dataset are included. This Atlas forms the basic printed version of an international database that will be freely available within the PANGAEA database: http:// www.pangaea.de and on the web site www.pangea.de/projects/dino-atlas. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.