Modern Benthic Foraminifera in Bidong Island, Terengganu, Malaysia

This dataset is showing modern benthic foraminiferal species found in the surface sediments of a coral reef environment in Bidong Island, Malaysia. The dataset also includes environmental parameters in the study area. This research was conducted to determine the distribution of modern benthic foraminiferal species in Bidong Island and whether species distribution is related to water depth and environmental parameters. Larger benthic foraminiferal species dominated the study area especially Amphistegina lessonii. Species data includes raw counts and relative abundance of living modern benthic foraminiferal species (Tables 1 and 3). Empty tests were also included in the dataset which also includes raw counts and relative abundances (Tables 2 and 4). Table 5 shows the environmental parameters, i.e., depth (m), organic matter (%), mean grain size (phi), sorting (phi), skewness (phi), kurtosis (phi), proportion of gravel (%), proportion of sand (%) and proportion of mud (%). This dataset can be used in FoRAM Index to assess the health of coral reefs in the study area