Lebensspuren data genrated by the random selection of 50 frames per station of the KuramBio 2012 expedition (8 stations analyzed; the depth of the stations ranged from 4,868 m to 5,768 m). In these 400 frames, the area of 5,692 lebensspuren was measured and the lebensspuren were classified. Additionally, megabenthic fauna was quantified and classified as "faunal coverage" at each station, which was the area covered by all individual megabenthic organisms. This "faunal coverage" area is based on the measurements of 4,009 individual animals. Environmental variables: content of grain fractions (%Sand, %Silt/Clay), organic carbon in the sediment (total weight (wt%) of the sediment), and chlorophyll-α concentrations (Chl.-α, μg/g) were obtained from previously published data on the studied stations (Sattarova and Artemova, 2015; Schmidt et al., 2019). 

The research was funded by a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Humboldt Foundation.