More and more data are being collected on species traits, as a means to understand how species respond and interact with their environment. Despite these efforts, effective integration of such data is hampered by inadequate standardization and insufficient sharing of metadata. The ShareTrait project will streamline the collection, synthesis and reuse of data on key species traits (metabolic rate, development and fecundity). By developing pipelines for data reformatting and standardization, we will enable individual researchers to easily contribute their data to our new database, allowing the research community to tap into the wealth of existing data and achieve a synthesis.
ShareTrait started on November 2022 through an internal launch involving different collaborators. Since then, we have received a handful of datasets. Since we are looking at the primary data, the cumulative number of records among all datasets is already 33,123 records. So, imagine how much more we could accomplish with your contributions.
We are working on generating tailor-made spreadsheet templates. It will help contributors with the data entry process. The tailor-made templates will be generated by combining the information provided by the data contributors in a questionnaire and their datasets. If you have published datasets on metabolic rates, development or fecundity of ectotherms, click on the links below:
To answer this questionnaire, you will need:
1. Your dataset in a spreadsheet format (.csv)
2. The pdf file of the publication associated with the dataset
After you have completed the questionnaire, you will receive a prefilled template (.csv) with the information you provided. You will provide feedback for some missing information, and check for consistency as well.
For further questions, contact the ShareTrait team (sharetrait2022@gmail.com).
Please forward this questionnaire to anyone you think may be interested in sharing data. By answering this questionnaire and providing data to the ShareTrait project, you will be asked if you are interested in participating as a co-author on our planned papers.
A longstanding goal in ecology is to distil general principles that govern species-environment relationships and apply these to protect biodiversity. Trait-based ecology has brought us closer to achieving this goal. For instance, by focusing on species traits rather than species identity, ecological studies can be made comparable across locations, scales and species composition. More and more data is collected on a wide variety of species traits. With the advent of open science, these data become increasingly Findable (F) and Accessible (A) due to online publishing in appendices, data repositories or databases. However, persistent barriers remain to data being Interoperable (I) and Reusable (R). These barriers have largely been solved in other fields (notably molecular biology and plant biology), by implementing rigorous standards.
In the fields of animal ecology and animal physiology, the application of FAIR principles lags behind due to several reasons. Foremost is the overwhelming diversity in form and function which hampers greater standardisation of methodology; ectotherm animals comprise over 99% of animal diversity. For instance, traits such as flight capacity or egg size are only informative in those taxonomic groups that can fly and that do lay eggs. In addition, the methodology to measure a given trait varies according to what is best-suited for a particular group of animals. As a result, disparate sets of data exist which makes it difficult to unify them across animal groups.
Here we propose to develop a platform for making trait data interoperable and reusable via pipelines that streamline the formatting of datasets for integrated use. Key ingredients are to embrace the variation in methodology by gathering metadata on how the data were acquired and to focus on three traits that are universal in ectotherm animals: metabolism, development and fecundity. Advantages of these traits are (i) their tight relationship to population dynamics, (ii) their commonality to all animals, and (iii) the abundance of data waiting to be synthesized. These traits on essential functions in animal biology can be analysed for major patterns in energy usage and expenditure across the animal kingdom and for identifying trade-offs between these functions.
ShareTrait is a project funded by the Dutch Research Council NWO through the Open Science Fund initiative.
Check out our 