Abstract
Life-history data are essential for providing answers to a wide range of questions in evolution, ecology, and conservation biology. While life history data for many species, especially plants, are available online, life history traits of European reptiles are available only widely scattered in different languages and primarily in printed media. For this reason, we generated a comprehensive trait database covering all European reptile species. Data were compiled by searching the peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed literature. The database covers the whole of Europe and neighbouring Asian and African countries. Traits were categorised under five main headings: Activity / Energy / Habitat; Phenology; Movement; Sexual Maturity; and Morphometry. To ensure that the data were standardised, we defined trait data categories before we started compiling data. All entries were checked by at least one other person. The dataset provides a unique source for meta-analyses and modelling in ecology and conservation biology.
Highlights
Large-scale analyses of drivers of biodiversity, biodiversity patterns, and global processes are gaining increasingly more importance in ecology and conservation science
Within the project SCALES (Henle et al 2010) we developed a trait database covering all European reptile species since the project was predominantly based in Europe
Method step description: We carried out a literature survey in the form of focal species surveys of all European reptiles
Summary
Large-scale analyses of drivers of biodiversity, biodiversity patterns, and global processes are gaining increasingly more importance in ecology and conservation science. Within the project SCALES (Henle et al 2010) we developed a trait database covering all European reptile species since the project was predominantly based in Europe. The database collates the species traits of all 122 European species belonging to 43 genera recognized by the SEH Atlas of 2004 (Gasc et al 2004), which was the most up-to-date list when we started our data compilation
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