The aim of Hemery et al. (2012) paper was to use phylogeographic and phylogenetic tools to assess the genetic diversity, demographic history and evolutionary relationships of this very common and abundant comatulid, in the context of the glacial history of the Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic shelves (Thatje et al. 2005, 2008). Over one thousand three hundred specimens (1307) used in this study were collected during seventeen cruises from 1996 to 2010, in eight regions of the Southern Ocean: Kerguelen Plateau, Davis Sea, Dumont d’Urville Sea, Ross Sea, Amundsen Sea, West Antarctic Peninsula, East Weddell Sea and Scotia Arc including the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula and the Bransfield Strait. We give here the metadata of this dataset, which lists sampling sources (cruise ID, ship name, sampling date, sampling gear), sampling sites (station, geographic coordinates, depth) and genetic data (phylogroup, haplotype, sequence ID) for each of the 1307 specimens. The identification of the specimens was controlled by an expert taxonomist specialist of crinoids (Marc Eléaume, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris) and all the COI sequences were matched against those available on the Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/IDS_OpenIdEngine). This dataset can be used by studies dealing with, among other interests, Antarctic and/or crinoid diversity (species richness, distribution patterns), biogeography or habitat / ecological niche modeling.
Geographic coverage: The specimens of Promachocrinus kerguelensis gathered in this dataset were collected from most of the strategic regions in the Southern Ocean (triangles in Figure 2): the Antarctic continental shelf (East Weddell Sea, Davis Sea, Dumont d'Urville Sea, Ross Sea, Amundsen Sea, West Antarctic Peninsula), the Scotia Arc islands (South Shetland, South Orkney and South Sandwich) and the Sub-Antarctic islands (South Georgia, Kerguelen and Heard). Specimens were sampled at depths ranging from 65 m to 1162 m. This covers most of the known distribution area of this species (black circles in Figure 2), but only a portion of the bathymetric range for this species, which extends from 10 m to 2100 m (Speel and Deardorn, 1983).
Taxonomic coverage: This dataset focuses on the Antarctic comatulid species Promachocrinus kerguelensis (Carpenter 1888), the most abundant and morphologically variable comatulid species in the Southern Ocean (Speel and Dearborn 1983). It corresponds to the 1307 specimens sequenced in Hemery et al. (2012).
Sampling method: The specimens were sampled using several sampling gears, depending on the cruise: agassiz trawls, beam trawls, bottom trawls, box corers, epibenthic sledges (Arntz and Brey 2001, 2003, 2005; Arntz and Gutt 1997; Beaman and O'Brien 2009; Duhamel et al. 2011; Fahrbach 2006; Fütterer et al. 2003; Lockhart et al. 2009). During each cruise, specimens were sorted onboard and then fixed and preserved in 70–95% ethanol or first frozen and subsequently preserved in ethanol. The specimens were curated by each institution once back from the field and digitized in their own databases before the specimens were gathered by the authors in the purpose of the molecular study. Metadata associated with each specimen were extracted from the cruise reports. The molecular data (barcoding) were generated following the protocols described in Ivanova et al. (2006), Eléaume et al. (2011) and Hemery et al. (2012).
Study Extent: The specimens were collected during 17 cruises in the Southern Ocean, from 1996 to 2010 (Figures 2 and 3): 53 specimens from EASIZ I (ANT XIII/3) onboard the RV Polarstern (1996) in the East Weddell Sea, 53 from EASIZ III (ANT XVII/3) onboard the RV Polarsten (2000) in the East Weddell Sea and the Scotia Arc, 12 from ANDEEP I&II (ANT XIX/3&4) and 25 from LAMPOS (ANT XIX/5) onboard the RV Polarstern (2002) in the Scotia Arc, 43 from BENDEX (ANT XXI/2) onboard the RV Polarstern (2003-2004) in the East Weddell Sea, 15 from ITALICA 2004 onboard the RV Italica (2004) in the Ross Sea, 106 from TAN0402 onboard the RV Tangaroa (2004) in the Ross Sea, 12 from ANDEEP III (ANT XXII/3) onboard the RV Polarstern (2005) in the East Weddell Sea, 14 from BIOPEARL I (JR144) onboard the RV James Clark Ross (2006) in the Scotia Arc, 418 from CEAMARC (2007/08 V3) onboard the RV Aurora Australis (2007-2008) in the Dumont d'Urville Sea, 17 from BIOPEARL II (JR179) onboard the RV James Clark Ross (2008) in the Amundsen Sea, 2 from HIMI-SC50 onboard the FV Southern Champion (2008) on the Kerguelen Plateau (Heard island), 148 from TAN0802 onboard the RV Tangaroa (2008) in the Ross Sea, 68 from AMLR 2009 Leg II onboard the RV Yuzhmorgeologiya (2009) in the Scotia Arc and the West Antarctic Peninsula, 26 from BASWAP (JR230) onboard the RV James Clark Ross (2009) in the West Antarctic Peninsula, 184 from BR09 onboard the RV Aurora Australis (2009-2010) in the Davis Sea, and 111 from POKER II onboard the FV Austral (2010) on the Kerguelen Plateau (Kerguelen island).
Quality Control: The initial geo-referencing was done by means of the vessel onboard GPS systems. Samples identification was supervised and checked by Marc Eléaume, crinoid taxonomist at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris, following Clark and Clark (1967) taxonomic description of the species, and matched to the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS). The barcoding was done by Lenaïg G. Hemery at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, and by the Canadian Center for DNA Barcoding, Toronto, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, and matched to sequences already available on the Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/IDS_OpenIdEngine). All sequences, specimen occurrences and identifications are linked together through unique numbers in BOLD under the public project name PROKE.