Functional traits database for North American birds

Estimation of functional diversity in biological communities requires extensive and complete data on numerous functional traits of species or even individuals. When estimating functional diversity at large scales, this fact possesses an issue that may be hard to overcome: for many species, there might not be sufficient data on their functional traits. In such cases, even if there is missing information on functional trait value for one species in a community, this makes the trait impossible to use for the estimation of the functional diversity of a community. On the other hand, there are available datasets on the functional traits of all extant species within certain lineages across the world, but such datasets are often limited to very few functional traits, missing some dimensions of species' ecological niches. In this dataset, I compiled the available data from various sources that describe 23 functional traits of 703 bird species that occur in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. These functional traits include the following: diet type, diurnal and nocturnal feeding, diet items, feeding methods, feeding substrate, nest type, nest substrates, breeding system, chick development at hatching, nest aggregation, clutch size, first breeding age, number of clutches a year, breeding success, adult annual survival, mean biomass, maximum lifespan, hand-wing index, kleptoparasitism, nest parasitism, and the extent of dependency on other species for building a nest.

生物群落功能多样性（functional diversity）的估算，需要获取物种乃至个体的众多功能性状（functional traits）的全面且详实的数据。当在大尺度下开展功能多样性估算时，这一需求便会带来一个难以攻克的难题：针对多数物种而言，其功能性状相关数据往往不足。在此类场景中，即便某一群落内仅有一种群的功能性状值存在缺失，该性状便无法再用于该群落的功能多样性估算。另一方面，全球范围内部分支系的所有现存物种的功能性状数据集虽已公开，但这类数据集通常仅涵盖极少的功能性状，遗漏了物种生态位（ecological niche）的部分维度。本数据集整合了多来源的公开数据，涵盖了在加拿大、美国及墨西哥分布的703种鸟类的23项功能性状。这些功能性状包括：食性类型、昼行与夜行觅食行为、食物类别、觅食方式、觅食基质、巢型、筑巢基质、繁殖体系、雏鸟孵化发育程度、巢群聚集度、窝卵数、首次繁殖年龄、年窝数、繁殖成功率、成体年存活率、平均生物量、最大寿命、手翼指数（hand-wing index）、盗寄生行为（kleptoparasitism）、巢寄生行为（nest parasitism），以及筑巢对其他物种的依赖程度。