1. ABOUT THE DATASET -------------------- Title: The Inverted Microbial Loop Stimulates Mineralisation of Sedimentary Organic Detritus. Creator(s): Clare Woulds [1], Dick van Oevelen [2], Silvia Hidalgo-Martinez [2], [3], Filip J. R. Meysman [2], [3] Organisation(s): [1] University of Leeds, [2] Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research, [3] University of Antwerp Rights-holder(s):Unless otherwise stated, Copyright 2026 University of Leeds Publication Year: 2026 Description: Results from mesocosm experiments investigating benthic community respiration in intertidal sediment. Sediment was from the Oostershelde estuary,The Netherlands. Treatments included an intact control, as well as sediment with only microbes, only macrofauna, and a combination of microbes and macrofauna where the macrofaunal community was controlled. 13C labelled organic detritus was added at the start of experiments, and respiration as monitored over 7 days as both oxygen consumption and as production of 13C labelled dissolved inorganic carbon. Data are presented for respiration rates (both oxygen consumption and dissolved organic carbon production), and assimilation of added carbon by both macrofauna and bacteria. Cite as: Clare Woulds, Dick van Oevelen, Silvia Hidalgo-Martinez, Filip Meysman, (2025): The Inverted Microbial Loop Stimulates Mineralisation of Sedimentary Organic Detritus. [Dataset]. https://doi.org/10.5518/1729 Related publication: Associated article available as a pre-print at https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3676. Citation Woulds C., van Oevelen D., Hidalgo-Martinez S., 3, Meysman F. J. R., The Inverted Microbial Loop Stimulates Mineralisation of Sedimentary Organic Detritus, Biogeosciences. Accepted. Contact: c.woulds@leeds.ac.uk 2. TERMS OF USE --------------- Copyright 2026 University of Leeds. Unless otherwise stated, this dataset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. 3. PROJECT AND FUNDING INFORMATION ---------------------------------- Title: Royal Society Travel Grant to C. Woulds and VIDI grant to F. Meysman Dates: 2010 Funding organisation: The Royal Society and NWO (Dutch Research Council) Grant no.NWO grant number 864.08.004 4. CONTENTS ----------- File listing One Excel file titled 'Data for Archiving Draft 2' Tabs are as follows: 'AA Respiration Rates' and MPB Respiration Rates' contain rates of respiration as mmol O2 m-2 d-1 and as mmol C m-2 d-1 for the 'AA' and 'MPB' versions of the experiment (for details see the associated publication). 'AA+MPB Cumulative Respiration', which contains summed total respiration over the whole experiment duration. 'AA Fauna Labelling' and 'MPB Fauna Labelling' provide the d13C values of fauna specimens at the end of the experiment, showing how much carbon they assimilated. 'AA Bacterial Uptake' provides the data on the quantity of added 13C labelled Carbon assimilated by the bacterial community in the 'AA' version of the experiment. 5. METHODS ---------- For full methods detail please see associated publication available as a pre-print at https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-3676. Citation Woulds C., van Oevelen D., Hidalgo-Martinez S., 3, Meysman F. J. R., The Inverted Microbial Loop Stimulates Mineralisation of Sedimentary Organic Detritus, Biogeosciences. Accepted.