Abundance of plantkonic foraminifera from 28 stations in the Aegean and the Levantine Sea

For detailed quantitative micropalaeontological analysis, specimens of planktonic foraminifera were picked from about 3g of dry marine sediment, taken from the 1-2 topmost centimeters of the cores. Each sample was disaggregated with a weak hydrogen peroxide solution, wet sieved through a 63 μm sieve, and left to dry at 50°C overnight. The dry residues were sieved through a 125 μm screen and split using an Otto micro-splitter into aliquots of at least 300 planktonic foraminifera specimens, which were identified using the taxonomy of Hemleben et al. (1989; doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-3544-6_2). Trilobatus sacculifer and Trilobatus trilobus were treated as two different morphotypes. As T. trilobus are regarded the T. sacculifer individuals without the sac-like final chamber. Following Aurahs et al., 2009 (doi:10.1111/j.1365-294X.2009.04136.x), we distinguish Globigerinoides ruber pink (var. rosea) as a distinct morphotype. For the white variety (var. albus), we follow the concept of Wang (2000; doi:10.1016/S0031-0182(00)00094-8) by distinguishing G. ruber sensu stricto (s.s.) and G. ruber sensu lato (s.l.) morphotypes. We further note that G. ruber s.s. is equivalent to Morphotype A (type “Normal”), while those specimens grouped as G. ruber s.l. correspond to the Morphotypes B and C (types “Platys”and “Elongate”) of Kontakiotis et al. (2017; doi:10.1016/j.jmarsys.2017.05.005) for the study area.