other trait databases

Invertebrates

BETSI is a french database on soil-macroinvertebrate traits. They have a end-user manual which is quite informative. The taxonomy used in the BETSI database results from the assembly of several taxonomies such as Fauna Europeae, Taxref and Blackmore. They developed an own Thesaurus for trait data, called T-SITA

BWARS is the national society dedicated to studying and recording bees, wasps & ants (aculeate Hymenoptera) in Britain & Ireland.

Budrys, E., Budriene., A. and Orlovskyte. S. 2014. Cavity-nesting wasps and bees database.

Florida Butterfly database

A paper by Bartonova et al in Ecography has a data appendix on butterfly traits

Plenty of answers to this question on researchgate about bird and butterfly traits

AntProfiler collects trait data on ants. Only three contributors so far, database currently not accessible.

GlobalAnt a new database on the geography of ant traits

The DynaTrait project works on invertebrate traits in aquatic communities.

The Edaphobase collects data on the distribution and ecology of soil invertebrates. The data can be accessed via the Edaphobase Portal. Traits seem to be mostly on niche preferences and reaction to anthropogenic stressors.

Carabids.org has occurrence data and trait information on Carabid beetles. Traits include body size and dispersal for all species and other life-history traits for most species. Nadja: the traits for the carabid species within the Exploratories are mainly from this source

araneae.org has a species list and occurrence data for all spiders in Europe. While it does not have a searchable trait database, body size and habitat preferences are given for most species. Nadja: some of our body size information is from this site

Vertebrates

The SCALES project has a trait database on reptiles which is maintained by Annegret Grimm.

Plants

Of course, leading on plant traits is TRY. We are aiming for compatibility with this database, which means that our species lists and trait lists should be matching and the trait template should be enabled to capture all information categories that the TRY database offers. The TRY data table has the following columns:

Column	Comment
LastName	Surname of data contributor
FirstName	First name of data contributor
DatasetID	ID of contributed dataset
Dataset	Name of contributed dataset
SpeciesName	Original name of species
AccSpeciesID	Consolidated species name
AccSpeciesName	Consolidated species name
ObservationID	Identifier for different measurements of the same observation
ObsDataID	Unique identifier for each record
TraitID	Identifier for traits (only if the record is a trait)
TraitName	Name of trait (only if the record is a trait)
DataID	Identifier for each sub-trait or context information
DataName	Name of sub-trait or context information
Original	Name Original Name of sub-trait or context information
OrigValueStr	Original value as text string
OrigUnitStr	Original unit as text string
ValueKindName	Value kind (single measurement, mean, median, etc.)
OrigUncertaintyStr	Original uncertainty as text string
UncertaintyName	Kind of uncertainty (standard deviation, standard error,...)
Replicates	Count of replicates
StdValue	Standardized value (not available in all cases)
StdUnit	Standard unit: always available for standardized traits
RelUncertaintyPercent	Relative uncertainty in %
OrigObsDataID	Identifier for duplicate entries
ErrorRisk	Identifier for outliers: distance to mean in standard deviations
Reference	Reference to be cited if trait record is used in analysis

A list of plant trait databases can be found on the INNGE wiki.

The Dispersal diaspore database collects data on seed dispersal.

The Fine Root Ecology Database (FRED) collects root traits for plants or plant communities. It covers 316 root traits in 8 categories.