The Tropical Andes Biodiversity Hotspot: A Comprehensive Dataset for the Mira-Mataje Binational Basins

We present a flora and fauna dataset for the Mira-Mataje binational basins. This is an area shared between southwestern Colombia and northwestern Ecuador, where both the Chocó and Tropical Andes biodiversity hotspots converge. Information from 110 sources was systematized in the Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) standard and geospatial vector data format for geographic information systems (GIS) (shapefiles). Sources included natural history museums, published literature, and citizen science repositories across 18 countries. The resulting database has 248,372 records from 5,281 species, of which 1,083 are endemic and 680 threatened. The diversity represented in the dataset is equivalent to 10\% of the total plant species and 26\% of the total terrestrial vertebrate species in the hotspots and corresponds to 0.07\% of their total area. The dataset can be used to estimate and compare biodiversity patterns in relation to environmental parameters and provide value to ecosystems, ecoregions, and protected areas. The dataset is a baseline for future assessments of biodiversity in the face of environmental degradation, climate change, and accelerated extinction processes.Data format: The .rds file extension saves a single object to be read in R and provides better compression, serialization, and integration within the R environment, than simple .csv files.Source publication: TBD