An Amniote Life History Database to Perform Comparative Analyses with Birds, Mammals, and ReptilesNathan Myhrvold1, Elita Baldridge2, Benjamin Chan1, Dan Freeman1, S.K. Morgan Ernest2

1Intellectual Ventures, Bellevue WA, 2Department of Biology & Ecology Center, Utah State University

Comparing Life History Patterns Across Taxa Provides Powerful Insights

But need large compilations for multiple taxonomic groups

weecology.org

Created Life History Data for Amniotes (Birds, Mammals, Reptiles)

Large On-Line Compilations

(e.g. Pantheria, AnAge)

Small-Large Literature

Compilations (e.g. Bennett 1986, Boyer et al 2009)

Species-specific Studies, Species

Accounts

Taxonomy CleaningMammals: Wilson & Reader 2005

Birds: IOC World Bird List 2014Reptiles: The Reptile Database

Data MergingMedians for multiple values

Unit conversions

Data Collected

Coverage of the Nine Core Life History ParametersTaxonomic Coverage

Birds Mammals ReptilesPe

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Number of Core Life History ValuesNumber of Species In Database:9802 out of 12924 Species of Birds3591 out of 5419 Species of Mammals6502 out of 9952 Species of Reptiles

Best Coverage is of Mammals and Birds

Want the Data?• The database is in review at Scientific Data, which will

publish the metadata.

• Data will be publicly available at the repository Dryad.

• Will announce on the Weecology Blog (jabberwocky.weecology.org)

Within Broad Taxonomic GroupsMass-specific Biomass Production in Lizards (Meiri et al 2012)

And Across Taxonomic GroupsAnnual Biomass Production Across Plants, And Animals (Ernest et al 2003)

Want To Talk About this Work?• Poster is posted on FigShare at:

• Feel free to share via whatever medium you wish.

• My twitter handle is @skmorgane

References (in order they appear): Meiri S., J.H. Brown, R.M. Sibly. 2012, Global Ecology & Biogeography 21: 592-602, Ernest, S.K.M., B.J. Enquist, J.H. Brown, E.L. Charnov, J.F. Gillooly et al. 2003. Ecology Letters 6: 990-995, Bennett, P.M. 1986..Ph.D. Thesis U. Sussex., Boyer, A.G., J-L Cartron, J.H. Brown. 2009. Journal of Biogeography 37:47-56, Wilson, DE, and DM Reeder., eds. 2005. Mammal Species of the World, #rd edition.; IOC World Bird List 2014 (http://www.worldbirdnames.org), The Reptile Database (http://www.reptile-database.org/)