Overview

MammalBase is a database of traits, measurements and diets of the species in class Mammalia.

For dietary information, MammalBase also provides Proximate Analysis data for several diet items.

Curated data

The data in MammalBase is harmonized against various standards: taxa are matched against the taxonomy of Wilson & Reeder (2005) (recent taxa) and the traits and their values are fitted with vocabularies or referenced descriptions of traits and values, for example, the dietary categories of Eisenberg 1981. Having the data that comes from various sources harmonized, makes data analysis easier. The aim is to provide general information on mammals for broad-scale analyses in Macroecology, Palaeontology and mammalian Community structures.

Ecological Trait-data Standard (ETS)

The Ecological Traitdata Standard (ETS) is a collection of terms for datasets on quantitative and qualitative organism properties (i.e. traits) that describe its performance or function in an ecosystem (Schneider et al., 2019).

MammalBase uses the Ecological Trait-data Standard vocabulary for most data imports and exports. For Data Custodians, MammalBase provides means to assign verbatimScientificNames, verbatimTraitNames, verbatimTraitValues and verbatimTraitUnits against the standardised terms. This process will provide a certain degree of quality checks of the data.

Collaboration and making MammalBase a tool for the scientific community

If you are interested in being a Data Contributor and sharing your mammal measurement/trait/diet data or if you are interested in being a Data Custodian of a specific taxonomic group or a mammalian trait please get in touch with kari.lintulaakso@helsinki.fi stating your name, current affiliation, area of expertise and your ORCID.