Subject	Biodiversity
Specific subject area	Seven inland Arctic regions of European Russia and Siberia
Type of data	Table
How data were acquired	Equipment for field sampling: plankton nets with 82–100 μm mesh nylon, Ruttner samplers, Petersen dredge (sample area 0.025 m2), handle blade trawl with mesh size 230 μm or less, UWITEC piston corer, rod-operated half-tube corer (Russian peat corer: a 5 cm diameter, 100 cm long sampler). Microscopes: BIMAM R13-1, Leica DM 4000 B, PZO (Warszawa, Poland), Axioskop 40 (Carl Zeiss) microscope with a MC-3254R/MFG 3ccd color video camera (AVT-Horn, Aalen, Germany) and AxioVision 3.1 software, Carl Zeiss Axio Imager A2, Carl Zeiss Axio Lab.A1.
Data format	Filtered
Parameters for data collection	Data were obtained by analyzing zooplankton, zoobenthos and paleo samples (cores). The data showed species composition of rotifers, cladocerans, and copepods from chiefly lentic waterbodies of seven Arctic regions collected by us in 1992, 1995–2017 and complemented by literature data from the 1960s to the 2010s. Sampling and processing methods were identical throughout the data collection.
Description of data collection	Zooplankton samples were collected using plankton nets and Ruttner samplers. Benthic micro-crustaceans were sampled using the Petersen dredge and a handle blade trawl. Samples were fixed in the field. Subfossil cladocerans from two lakes were collected using the tube corers; paleo samples were processed in the laboratory. All samples were examined under light microscopes. Our own and literature data on sample composition were combined to compile the taxa presence/absence data set, where each column of the table corresponded to one region.
Data source location	Institutions: Institute of Biology of Komi Science Centre of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Institute of Biophysics of Federal Research Center “Krasnoyarsk Science Center” of Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences; Siberian Federal University; Institute of Geology and Petroleum Technologies, Kazan Federal University; Lena Delta Nature Reserve Regions: the Kola Peninsula, the Pechora River Delta, the Bolshezemelskaya tundra, the Polar Ural, the Putorana Plateau, the Lena River Delta, the Indigirka River Basin Country: Russia Latitude and longitude (and GPS coordinates, if possible) for collected samples/data: about 66.69 – 73.39 N, 33.62 – 147.52 E Primary data sources for some points ([2-8] in Table 1): A.N. Kruglova, Zooplankton of the Kola River (the Barents Sea Basin), Proceeding of Karelian Scientific Centre of RAS. 4 (2009), 85‒89. (In Russian). E.S. Makartseva, Zooplankton of lakes of different landscapes of Kola Peninsula, in: V.G. Drabkova, T.D. Slepukhina (Eds), Lakes of different landscapes of Kola Peninsula. Nauka, Leningrad. (1974), 143‒179. (In Russian). E.V. Borutskiy, Crustacea. Freshwater Harpacticoida, Fauna of U.S.S.R., Vol. 3(4). Academy of Sciences of USSR Press, Moscow, Leningrad. (1952), 425 pp. (In Russian). Hydrobiological study and fish agriculture application in lakes of the Extreme North, A.M. Gidalevich, M.T. Chernyakova (Eds), Nauka, Moscow. (1966) (In Russian). Flora and fauna of the waterbodies of the European North (case study of lakes of Bolshezemelskaya tundra), M.V. Getsen (Ed), Nauka, Leningrad. (1978), 178 pp. (In Russian).
	N.V. Vekhov, Life cycles of copepods of the Diaptomidae family (Crustacea, Calanoida) in waterbodies of the Subarctic Region in Europe, Ekologiya 3 (1988), 54-66. (In Russian). N.G. Sheveleva, Diversity of planktonic fauna of Putorana plateau water bodies, in: A.A. Romanov (Ed), Bird and animal communities of the Putorana Plateau: studies and conservation, Rosselhozakademia Press, Moscow. (2006), 239‒251. (In Russian).
Data accessibility	With the article Data on taxa composition of freshwater zooplankton and meiobenthos across Arctic regions of Russia Repository name: Mendeley Data Direct URL to data: http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/45tbyx9r3n.2 Fefilova, Elena; Dubovskaya, Olga; Kononova, Olga; Frolova, Larisa; Abramova, Ekaterina; Nigamatzyanova, Gulnara (2021), “The list of rotifer and micro-crustacean taxa identified in the inland waters of the regions of Russian Arctic ”, Mendeley Data, V2, doi:10.17632/45tbyx9r3n.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/45tbyx9r3n.3 license CC BY 4.0
Related research article	E. Fefilova, O. Dubovskaya, L. Frolova, E. Abramova, O. Kononova, G. Nigamatzyanova, I. Zuev, E. Kochanova, Biogeographic patterns of planktonic and meiobenthic fauna diversity in inland waters of the Russian Arctic. Freshwater Biology (2020) 00:1‒17. https://doi.org/10.1111/fwb.13624