AusTraits: a curated plant trait database for the Australian flora

AusTraits is a transformative database, containing measurements on the traits of Australia’s plant species, standardised from hundreds of disconnected primary sources. So far, data have been assembled from 175 distinct sources, describing more than 80 plant traits and over 19k species. A full list of sources is provided below. To handle the harmonising of diverse data sources, we use a reproducible workflow to implement the various changes required for each source to reformat it suitable for incorporation in AusTraits. Such changes include restructuring datasets, renaming variables, changing variable units, changing taxon names. While this repository contains the harmonised data, the raw data and code used to build the resource will also be made available, <strong>Contributors</strong> The project is jointly led by Dr Daniel Falster (University of New South Wales, Sydney) and Dr Rachael Gallagher (Macquarie University), with input from 189 contributors from over 85 institutions. The following people and institutions have have contributed to building this resource. <strong>Data contributors (individuals)</strong>: Mark Adams, Collin Ahrens, Tara Angevin, Julian Ash, Owen K. Atkin, Tony Auld, Caitlan Baxter, Anthony Bean, Biloni, Chris Blackman, Eleanor Bolza, David Bowman, Jason Bragg, Willi Brand, Amber Briggs, John Brock, Tim Brodribb, Don Bulter, Jeff Burley, Geoff Burrows, Carter, Jane A. Catford, Gregory Cawthray, Gregory Chandler, Alex Chapman, Si-Chong Chen, Nguyen Ngoc Chinh, Robert Chinnock, David Christophel, Martin Chudnoff, Peter Clarke, Derek Clayton, Harold Trevor Clifford, Peta Clode, Wendy Cooper, William Cooper, Ian Cowie, Lyn Craven, Michael Crisp, Erika Cross, Saul Cunningham, Ian Davidson, Matthew Daws, Jane L. DeGabriel, Matthew Denton, Desch, Dimitri, David Duncan, Richard P. Duncan, Marco Duretto, John Dwyer, Derek Eamus, Cheryl Edwards, Judy Egan, Rebel Elick, Manuel Esperon-Rodriguez, John Evans, Daniel Falster, Jennifer Firn, James Flynn, Carlos Fonseca, Paul Irwin Forster, Jennifer Funk, Mark G.Tjoelker, Rachael Gallagher, Sean Gleason, Ethel Goble-Garratt, Goldsmith, Bruce Gray, Philip K Groom, Caroline Gross, Peter Grubb, Greg Guerin, Lydia Guja, Matthew Harrison, Foteini Hassiotou, Patrick Hayes, Patrick E. Hayes, Heady, Martin Henery, John Herbohn, Dieter Hochuli, Jocelyn Howell, Jing Hu, Lesley Hughes, Kate Hughes, John Huisman, Bernie Hyland, Muhammad Islam, Daniel Jin, Greg Jordan, Enrique Jurado, Greg Keighery, Jürgen Kellermann, Kirsten Knox, Robert Kooyman, Westoby Lab, Etienne Laliberté, Hans Lambers, Byron Lamont, Daniel C. Laughlin, Michael Lawes, James Lawson, Emma Laxton, Caroline Lehmann, Michelle Leishman, Brendan Lepschi, Margaret Lewington, Felix Lim, Udayangani Liu, Janice Lord, Ian Lunt, Christopher Lusk, Anthony Manea, Neville Marchant, Abdurahim Martawijaya, Bruce Maslin, James McCarthy, Daniel Metcalfe, Karel Mokany, Angela Moles, Ben D. Moore, John Morgan, Huw Morgan, Samantha Munroe, Peter Myerscough, Andrew O’Reilly-Nugent, Odhran S. O’Sullivan, Brad Oberle, Mike Olsen, Mark Ooi, Colin Osborne, Grazyna Paczkowska, Paula Peeters, Burak Pekin, Caio Guilherme Pereira, Laura Pollock, Jeff R. Powell, Sally A. Power, Lynda Prior, Jenny Read, Barbara Rice, Anna Richards, Jessica L. Rigg, Bryan Roberts, Barbara Rye, Paul D. Rymer, Miguel de Salas, Gordon Sanson, Susanne Schmidt, Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Waltraud Schulze, Inge Schulze, Andrew John Scott, Kerrie Sendall, Oey Djoen Seng, Alison Shapcott, Santiago Soliveres, Ben Sparrow, Rachel Standish, Timothy Staples, Jan Suda, Ian Thompson, Yue Phin David Jeremiah-Seok Tng, H. Toelken, Kyle Tomlinson, Malcolm Trudgeon, Erik Veneklaas, Peter Vesk, Maria Vorontsova, Lasantha K. Weerasinghe, Mark Westoby, Judith Wheeler, Trevor Whiffin, Jarrah Wills, Peter Wilson, Ian Wright, Amy E. Zanne <strong>Data contributors (institutions)</strong>: Australian National Botanic Garden, Brisbane Rainforest Action and Information Network, Kew Botanic Gardens, National Herbarium of NSW, Northern Territory Herbarium, Queensland Herbarium, Western Australian Herbarium, South Australian Herbarium, State Herbarium of South Australia, Tasmanian Herbarium <strong>Data processing</strong>: Daniel Falster, Elizabeth Wenk, Caitlan Baxter, Sam Andrew, James Lawson, Stuart Allen <strong>Project initiation and data compilation</strong>: Rachael Gallagher, Ian Wright <strong>Funding</strong>: This work was supported by fellowship grants from Australian Research Council to Falster (FT160100113), Gallagher (DE170100208) and Wright (FT100100910), a grant from Macquarie University to Gallagher, and investment from the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), via their "Transformative data collections" (https://doi.org/10.47486/TD044) program. The ARDC is enabled by National Collaborative Research Investment Strategy (NCRIS). <strong>Accessing and use of data</strong> AusTraits data are released under an open source licence (CC-BY), enabling re-use by the community. A requirement of use is that users cite the AusTraits resource paper, which includes all contributors as co-authors: Citation pending In addition, we encourage users you to cite the original data sources, wherever possible. <strong>Contributing</strong> We envision AusTraits as an on-going collaborative community resource that: Increases our collective understanding the Australian flora; and Facilitates accumulating and sharing of trait data; Builds a sense of community among contributors and users; and Aspires to fully transparent and reproducible research of highest standard. As a community resource, we are very keen for people to contribute. Here are some of the ways you can contribute: <strong>Reporting Errors</strong>: If you notice a possible error in AusTraits, please post an issue on GitHub . <strong>Refining documentation:</strong> We welcome additions and edits that make using the existing data or adding new data easier for the community. <strong>Contributing new data</strong>: We gladly accept new data contributions to AusTraits. For full instructions on preparing data for inclusion in AusTraits, please got to https://github.com/traitecoevo/austraits.build. Structure of AusTraits data The compiled AusTraits database has the following main components: <pre><code>austraits ├── traits ├── sites ├── methods ├── excluded_data ├── taxonomy ├── definitions ├── contributors └── build_info</code></pre> These elements include all the data and contextual information submitted with each contributed datasets. Full details on each of these components and columns therein are contained within the document <code>Austraits_dictionary.html</code> and within the file <code>definitions.yml</code>. Full details on all original sources used to generate this compilation and variables collected are available within the download.