Samples were acquired by the scientific drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution at IODP Site U1385A (37°34.285’N, 10°7.562’W) on November 25th, 2011 by Advanced Piston Coring (APC). Whole-round sections meant for molecular analysis were immediately frozen at -80 degrees C for the remainder of the cruise and shipped at this temperature. DNA was extracted using the MO BIO PowerMax Soil DNA Isolation Kit (MO BIO Laboratories Inc., Carlsbad, CA, USA) with a minor adjustment to manufacturer’s protocol. Briefly, 10 g of sediment extruded from the interior (>1cm from core liner) of whole-round core samples was processed according to manufacturer’s instructions, save for an additional step of incubation in a 65 degree C water bath for 15 minutes prior to step 4 (10 minute vortex). Extractions did not yield enough genomic DNA for direct Illumina library preparation. Thus, 2 ng of genomic DNA from each sample was added to the GenomePlex Whole Genome Amplification (WGA) kit (Sigma-Aldrich, Inc., St. Louis, MO, USA). Reactions were run for 20 cycles at manufacturer suggested denaturing and annealing temperatures. Triplicate reactions were pooled and products were purified using the GenElute PCR Clean-Up kit (Sigma-Aldrich Inc., St. Louis, MO, USA). Samples were sent for Illumina library preparation and 2 x 150 bp paired-end-sequencing was performed on 2 lanes of a Illumina HiSeq2500 machine at the University of Delaware Sequencing and Genotyping Center in the Delaware Biotechnology Institute according to manufacturer’s instructions. Over 85,000,000 reads were generated across 6 samples.