Abstract
Abstract Trait‐based approaches are widespread throughout ecological research as they offer great potential to achieve a general understanding of a wide range of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms. Accordingly, a wealth of trait data is available for many organism groups, but this data is underexploited due to a lack of standardization and heterogeneity in data formats and definitions. We review current initiatives and structures developed for standardizing trait data and discuss the importance of standardization for trait data hosted in distributed open‐access repositories. In order to facilitate the standardization and harmonization of distributed trait datasets by data providers and data users, we propose a standardized vocabulary that can be used for storing and sharing ecological trait data. We discuss potential incentives and challenges for the wide adoption of such a standard by data providers. The use of a standard vocabulary allows for trait datasets from heterogeneous sources to be aggregated more easily into compilations and facilitates the creation of interfaces between software tools for trait‐data handling and analysis. By aiding decentralized trait‐data standardization, our vocabulary may ease data integration and use of trait data for a broader ecological research community and enable global syntheses across a wide range of taxa and ecosystems.
Highlights
Functional traits are phenotypic characteristics that are related to the fitness and performance of an organism (McGill, Enquist, Weiher, & Westoby, 2006; Violle et al, 2007)
We propose a versatile vocabulary for describing ecological trait datasets, which builds upon, and is compatible with, existing terminology standards for biodiversity data, in particular the Darwin Core Standard for biodiversity data (DwC; Wieczorek et al, 2012)
We review four types of initiatives that are of relevance for trait‐data standardization: 1. Initiatives that provide trait datasets which have been assembled out of a particular research interest, either by measurement or collated from the literature
Summary
Functional traits are phenotypic (i.e. morphological, physiological, behavioural) characteristics that are related to the fitness and performance of an organism (McGill, Enquist, Weiher, & Westoby, 2006; Violle et al, 2007). Recent years have seen a proliferation of trait‐ based research in a wide range of fields: trait data have been used to understand the evolutionary basis of individual‐level properties (Salguero‐Gómez et al, 2016), global patterns of biodiversity (Díaz et al, 2016), and the relationship between ecosystem functions and the functional composition of species assemblages (Bello et al, 2010; Mouillot, Graham, Villéger, Mason, & Bellwood, 2013). Trait data have traditionally been harmonized and compiled into centralized databases only for specific organism groups and regional scope, often centred around particular research questions (e.g. PanTHERIA, Jones et al, 2009; TRY, Kattge, Díaz, et al, 2011; AmphiBio, Oliveira, São‐Pedro, Santos‐Barrera, Penone, & Costa, 2017). Besides initiatives aiming at assembling data, tools to enable the compatibility of data across databases are being developed These include software to access trait data from the Internet These include software to access trait data from the Internet (e.g. Ankenbrand, Hohlfeld, Weber, Foerster, & Keller, 2018; Chamberlain, Foster, Bartomeus, LeBauer, & Harris, 2017), semantic web standards (Page, 2008; Wieczorek et al, 2012) and thesauri of consensus terms (Garnier et al, 2017; Walls et al, 2012)
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