Global seabird plastic occurrence database

**Data from the paper**: Frequency of plastic occurrence varies across phylogeny but not ecology in seabirds. 2026. Stephanie Avery-Gomm, Nia Potapova, Chrissie Potter, Alexander L. Bond, Stephanie B. Borrelle, Jennifer L. Lavers, Steven J. Portugal, Hugh P. Possingham, Jennifer F. Provencher, and Natalie Cooper. ADD LINK.

Code for all analyses can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/nhcooper123/PhyloPlastics

Archived data are as follows. Please click on individual files below for their associated metadata.

## Raw data

* **01_sources-for-plastic-ingestion-data.csv**. The papers from our literature searches.
* **02_plastic-ingestion-data.csv**. The raw plastic ingestion data extracted from papers in 01
* **03_trait-data.csv**. Species specific trait data taken from the literature.

## Cleaned data used in the analyses
The raw data were cleaned and aggregated prior to analyses. See `analyses/data-preparation` and `01-data-preparation.qmd` at https://github.com/nhcooper123/PhyloPlastics for more details.

* **plastic-data-aggregated_2026.csv**. Aggregated data used in analyses.
* **seabird-tree-plastic-2026.csv**. Phylogeny of Claramunt et al 2025 pruned to only species with plastic ingestion data.
* **full-species-list-2026.csv**. Summarised dataset for all seabird species indicating which are/are not part of our plastic ingestion dataset. Used in the creation of Figure S2.

## Cleaned data used in sensitivity analyses

* **plastic-data-aggregated-nest_2026.csv**. Aggregated data including nest-bound birds which were excluded from the main analyses.
* **seabird-tree-plastic-nest-2026.csv**. Phylogeny of Claramunt et al 2025 pruned to only species with plastic occurrence data but including nest-bound birds which were excluded from the main analyses.
* **seabird-tree-plastic-2026-no-additions.csv**. Phylogeny of Claramunt et al 2025 pruned to only species with plastic occurrence data and excluding the 35 species added to the phylogeny used in the main analyses.

## Taxonomy

* **seabird-list-Clements2025.csv**. List of seabird species according to Clements et al 2025 taxonomy.

The full taxonomy file can be found here: https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/.

If you want to use the taxonomy please cite:
> Clements, J. F., P. C. Rasmussen, T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, A. Spencer, S. M. Billerman, B. L. Sullivan, M. Smith, and C. L. Wood. 2025. The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World: v2025. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/.

## Phylogeny

* **sea-bird-tree-2026.nex**. Phylogeny of Claramunt et al. 2025 pruned to seabird species only.
* **family-tree-2026.nex**. Family level phylogeny of Claramunt et al. 2025 pruned to seabird families only.
* **tips-to-add.csv**. Details of 39 species missing from Claramunt et al. 2025 and how these were added to the phylogeny.

The full raw phylogeny file can be found here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/evolucionario/BigBirdTree/refs/heads/main/RAGBackbone/BBtree3.tre.

If you want to use the phylogeny please cite:
> Claramunt, Santiago, Catherine Sheard, Joseph W. Brown, Gala Cortés-Ramírez, Joel Cracraft, Michelle M. Su, Brian C. Weeks, and Joseph A. Tobias. 2025. “A New Time Tree of Birds Reveals the Interplay between Dispersal, Geographic Range Size, and Diversification.” Current Biology 35 (16): 3883-3895.e4.