Weight-to-weight conversion factors for benthic macrofauna: recent measurements from the Baltic and the North Seas
Abstract. Estimates of biomass often involve the use of weight-to-weight conversion factors for rapid assessment of dry-weights based metrics from more widely available measurements of wet weights. Availability of standardized biomass data is essential amid research on population dynamics, energy flow, fishery and food web interactions. However, for many species and groups the widely-applicable freely available conversion factors until now remained very rough approximations with high degree of taxonomic generalization. To close up this gap, here for the first time we publish the most detailed and statically robust list of ratios of wet weight (WW), dry weight (DW) and ash-free dry weight (AFDW). The dataset includes over 17000 records of single measurements for 497 taxa. Along with aggregated calculations, enclosed reference information with sampling dates and geographical coordinates provides the broad opportunity for reuse and repurposing. It empowers the future user to do targeted sub selections of data to best combine them with own local data, instead of only having a single value of conversion factor per region. Data can help to quantify natural variability and uncertainty, and assist to refine current ecological theory. The dataset is available via an unrestricted repository from: http://doi.io-warnemuende.de/10.12754/data-2021-0002 (Gogina et al., 2021).