Unified Insect Trait Database

Rationale

A central goal of community ecology is to understand taxa responses to geographic and temporal environmental gradients. This field has only grown more pertinent in our current era of global change. Functional trait approaches offer mechanistic links for understanding these responses and predicting community change. Invertebrates are further a crucial study group as they are key contributors to ecosystem function in the majority of Earth’s critical zones and are used globally as indicators of ecosystem health. However, in comparison to plants and most vertebrates, documentation of invertebrate traits is lacking in both collection and compilation. Following the highly successful model of the plant trait database TRY, we propose taking the first steps toward a global unified trait database for terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates.

Activities

Our group is currently working on several research products related to insect traits:

1. a summary database of existing insect trait databases and datasets;
2. a review article highlighting the importance of trait data for ecological studies and the current gaps that exist which limit large scale synthesis;
3. a systematic approach and workflow for creating a global insect trait database; and
4. research grants to support ongoing creation and maintenance of a global trait database.

Get Involved

Want to get involved with the working group? Have a suggestion for a product or project associated with insect traits? Reach out to the chair: perry.1864@osu.edu and co-chair: weltie@si.edu

Members

Members:

• Nathan Baker, Nature Research Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania
• Eliza Grames, Department of Biology, Binghamton University
• Karl Roeder, North Central Agricultural Research Laboratory, USDA-ARS
• Vaughn Shirey, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern California