Eye morphology contributes to the ecology and evolution of the avian tree of life

The avian eye is the single most important external anatomical trait for interpreting light environments by birds and varies widely in size and shape across the avian tree of life. The attached dataset provides measurements on eye size taken from preserved museum specimens for roughly one third of the avian tree of life (N = 3,475 species). The original dataset was collected by Stanley Ritland and Alice Hutchinson and archived as appendices in Stanley Ritland’s Dissertation from the University of Chicago (1982): “The Allometry of the Vertebrate Eye”., The attached dataset includes all avian measurements from the Dissertation, corresponding to the entirety of Table 7 (pages 1415 – 1647). Digitization was led by I. Ausprey, S. Montgomery, and K. Perez, with financial support from the Katherine Ordway Chair in Ecosystem Conservation at the Florida Museum of Natural History, USA.
Users are asked to please consult the original Dissertation (available on ProQuest) for details on measuring methodology, specimen origins, caveats, and sources of data for other morphological traits provided in Table 7 (i.e., wing, bill, body mass). In particular, users must consider the columns “O” and “S” which can be used to screen for relevant biases, such as specimen age (embryo, juvenile, adult, etc.) and sex.
Table headings were preserved from the original Dissertation and definitions are define in the original Dissertation. The taxonomy was aligned to the Jetz Bird Tree (Jetz et al. 2012). Taxonomic columns are clearly indicated as pertaining to the ori..., , Figure_3_measurement_diagram.jpg: Screenshot of page 12 (Figure 3) of the original Dissertation that show the exact dimensions of the different eyes measurements.

Ritland_eyes_raw_final.csv: The complete Table 7 from the original Dissertation (pages 1415 – 1647). The only added fields relate to the updated taxonomy (Jetz Bird Tree).

Data Fields:

The columns that end in the word \"LET\" (e.g., AD_LET) indicate a qualification for the associated measurement. A = \"based on measurements of two eyes\", B/C/D/E = \"estimate or measurement in question\". Unfortunately, Ritland did not detail the difference between these four codes.

enter_order: Order of digitization and data entry.

species_jetz: Updated species taxonomy based on the Jetz Bird Tree (Jetz et al. 2012)

family_jetz: Updated family taxonomy based on the Jetz Bird Tree (Jetz et al. 2012)

tax_jetz: Taxonomic order for phylogenetic sorting based on the Jetz Bird Tree (Jetz et al. 2012).

obs: Initials of person who digitized a...