Species traits and occurrences for Trait Distribution Modelling (TDM) of Malagasy amphibians

Spatial Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment (CCVA) with few occurrences (n < 10) is unreliable using Species Distribution Models (SDM). Trait Distribution Models (TDM) provide a mechanism to assess rare or threatened species with few occurrences, whereby species traits are used for spatial CCVA. Categorical species traits are collated from peer reviewed literature and ordinated by categorical principal components analysis (CATPCA) to remove the phylogenetic link. The ordinated data is then grouped by K-means clustering to produce trait complexes. Species occurrences for each trait complex are pooled and trait complexes can then be modelled by presence only SDM such as MaxEnt. Datasets provided are: categorical species traits and species occurrences for Malagasy amphibians. The data covers the extent of Madagascar. Species occurrence data: species are based on the IUCN 2014 assessment of Malagasy amphibians. Duplicates or occurrences in the same grid cell have not been removed from species occurrence data.