AVONET: morphological, ecological and geographical data for all birds

Abstract

Functional traits offer a rich quantitative framework for developing and testing theories in evolutionary biology, ecology and ecosystem science. However, the potential of functional traits to drive theoretical advances and refine models of global change can only be fully realised when species-level information is complete. Here we present the AVONET dataset containing comprehensive functional trait data for all birds, including six ecological variables, 11 continuous morphological traits, and information on range size and location. Raw morphological measurements are presented from 90,020 individuals of 11,009 extant bird species sampled from 181 countries. These data are also summarised as species averages in three taxonomic formats, allowing integration with a global phylogeny, geographical range maps, IUCN Red List data and the eBird citizen science database. The AVONET dataset provides the most detailed picture of continuous trait variation for any major radiation of organisms, offering a global template for testing hypotheses and exploring the evolutionary origins, structure and functioning of biodiversity.

Assessing taxonomic and functional change in British breeding bird assemblages over time

“…Therefore, functional diversity could have changed across the study region without any change in composition within or between assemblages. However, the extent of this variation appears to be negligible in relationship to interspecific variation for birds generally (see Tobias, et al, in press), suggesting that both our use of species trait averages and our assumption that trait values are constant across the region were justified.…”

Global plant‐frugivore trait matching is shaped by climate and biogeographic history

“…We are grateful to Adam Devenish and Julie Marin for help with data organisation, and also to all measurers of wild-caught birds, bird specimens and the respective collection holders who have been key to assembling the global bird trait dataset (Tobias et al 2022) and the gape size dataset provided with this paper (doi.org/10.5061/ dryad.tqjq2bw05). We thank members of the WDK, CHG, MS and SAF research groups for constructive feedback on the work, and Jeremy Kerr and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.…”

Global impacts of climate change on avian functional diversity

“…We assembled morphological and ecological trait data from comprehensive global datasets (Pigot et al, 2020; Tobias et al, 2022; Tobias & Pigot, 2019). For all species in our sample, we compiled information on eight continuous traits (Table ), which provide information about key dimensions of the avian niche.…”

“…To address this issue, we compared the functional structure of current and future avian assemblages using a comprehensive data set of morphological and ecological traits for 8268 landbird species worldwide (Pigot et al, 2020; Tobias et al, 2022). For all species, we compiled eight continuous variables to capture morphological variation in body mass, beak shape, wing shape and the length of tarsus and tail.…”