Departamento de Biologia Animal, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil.
Departamento de Biociências, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Areia, Paraíba, Brazil.
PLoS Biol. 2024 Jul 11;22(7):e3002658. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002658. eCollection 2024 Jul.
Tetrapods (amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) are model systems for global biodiversity science, but continuing data gaps, limited data standardisation, and ongoing flux in taxonomic nomenclature constrain integrative research on this group and potentially cause biased inference. We combined and harmonised taxonomic, spatial, phylogenetic, and attribute data with phylogeny-based multiple imputation to provide a comprehensive data resource (TetrapodTraits 1.0.0) that includes values, predictions, and sources for body size, activity time, micro- and macrohabitat, ecosystem, threat status, biogeography, insularity, environmental preferences, and human influence, for all 33,281 tetrapod species covered in recent fully sampled phylogenies. We assess gaps and biases across taxa and space, finding that shared data missing in attribute values increased with taxon-level completeness and richness across clades. Prediction of missing attribute values using multiple imputation revealed substantial changes in estimated macroecological patterns. These results highlight biases incurred by nonrandom missingness and strategies to best address them. While there is an obvious need for further data collection and updates, our phylogeny-informed database of tetrapod traits can support a more comprehensive representation of tetrapod species and their attributes in ecology, evolution, and conservation research.
四足动物（两栖动物、爬行动物、鸟类和哺乳动物）是全球生物多样性科学的模式系统，但持续的数据空白、有限的数据标准化以及分类命名法的不断变化，限制了对该群体的综合研究，并可能导致有偏差的推断。我们结合并协调了分类学、空间、系统发育和属性数据，并基于系统发育进行多重插补，提供了一个全面的数据资源（四足动物特征 1.0.0），其中包括最近完全采样的系统发育中涵盖的所有 33281 种四足动物的体型、活动时间、微观和宏观生境、生态系统、威胁状况、生物地理学、岛屿化、环境偏好和人类影响的数值、预测值和来源。我们评估了跨分类群和空间的差距和偏差，发现属性值中共享的数据缺失随着分类群水平的完整性和丰富度的增加而增加。使用多重插补预测缺失属性值显示，估计的宏观生态模式发生了重大变化。这些结果突出了非随机缺失带来的偏差以及解决这些偏差的最佳策略。虽然显然需要进一步的数据收集和更新，但我们基于系统发育的四足动物特征数据库可以支持在生态学、进化和保护研究中更全面地代表四足动物物种及其属性。
