Biodiversity Data Journal 4: e10071 doi: 10.3897/BDJ.4.e10071 Data Paper Digging for historical data on the occurrence of benthic macrofaunal species in the southeastern Mediterranean Irini Tsikopoulou‡§, Aglaia Legaki , Panagiotis D. Dimitriou‡, Evangelia Avramidou|, Nicolas Bailly ¶, Stamatina Nikolopoulou¶ ‡ University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece § University of Ahtens, Athens, Greece | Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece ¶ Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR), Heraklion, Greece Corresponding author: Irini Tsikopoulou (
[email protected]), Stamatina Nikolopoulou (
[email protected]) Academic editor: Christos Arvanitidis Received: 02 Aug 2016 | Accepted: 25 Aug 2016 | Published: 01 Nov 2016 Citation: Tsikopoulou I, Legaki A, Dimitriou P, Avramidou E, Bailly N, Nikolopoulou S (2016) Digging for historical data on the occurrence of benthic macrofaunal species in the southeastern Mediterranean. Biodiversity Data Journal 4: e10071. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.4.e10071 Abstract Background The benthic macrofaunal biodiversity of the southeastern Mediterranean is considerably understudied compared to other Mediterranean regions. Monitoring biodiversity in this area is crucial as this region is particularly susceptible to biological invasions and temperature alteration. Historical biodiversity data could provide a useful baseline for monitoring potential changes and provide informarion to support a better understanding of the possible effects of anthropogenic