Abstract
Synthesizing trait observations and knowledge across the Tree of Life remains a grand challenge for biodiversity science. Species traits are widely used in ecological and evolutionary science, and new data and methods have proliferated rapidly. Yet accessing and integrating disparate data sources remains a considerable challenge, slowing progress toward a global synthesis to integrate trait data across organisms. Trait science needs a vision for achieving global integration across all organisms. Here, we outline how the adoption of key Open Science principles—open data, open source and open methods—is transforming trait science, increasing transparency, democratizing access and accelerating global synthesis. To enhance widespread adoption of these principles, we introduce the Open Traits Network (OTN), a global, decentralized community welcoming all researchers and institutions pursuing the collaborative goal of standardizing and integrating trait data across organisms. We demonstrate how adherence to Open Science principles is key to the OTN community and outline five activities that can accelerate the synthesis of trait data across the Tree of Life, thereby facilitating rapid advances to address scientific inquiries and environmental issues. Lessons learned along the path to a global synthesis of trait data will provide a framework for addressing similarly complex data science and informatics challenges.
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Change history
09 March 2020
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1167-9
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Acknowledgements
Ideas presented stem from initial discussions at three international meetings—the Australian National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility Roundtable on Species Traits, the iDigBio ALA Traits workshop, and the preliminary Open Traits workshop held at the Ecological Society of America. R.V.G. is supported by an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship (DE170100208). D.S.F. is supported by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT160100113). R.S.-G. is supported by NERC R/142195-11-1. W.D.P. is supported by NSF ABI-1759965, NSF EF-1802605, and USDA Forest Service agreement 18-CS-11046000-041. A.K. received financial support for M.J.A. by the German Research Foundation (DFG KE1743/7-1). C.M.I. was supported by the Biological and Environmental Research program in the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Science. C.P. is supported by the DFG Priority Program 1374. M.J. was supported by the German Research Foundation within the framework of the Jena Experiment (FOR 1451) and by the Swiss National Science Foundation. S.P.-M. was supported by the Benson Fund from the Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History. S.T.M. is supported by SERDP project RC18-1346. B.J.E. was supported by NSF Grants DEB0133974, HDR1934790 and EF1065844, a Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship Grant, and an Oxford Martin School Fellowship.
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R.V.G. wrote the manuscript with contributions from D.S.F., B.S.M., R.S.-G., V.V., W.D.P., F.D.S., J.K., J.H.P., J.S.M., M.J.A., C.P., X.F., V.M.A., J.A., S.C.A., M.A.B., L.M.B., B.L.B., C.H.B.-A., I.B., A.J.R.C., R.C., B.R.C., D.A.C., S.L.C., B.F., H.G., A.H.H., J.H., J.A.H., H.H., M.H., C.M.I., M.J., M.K., A.K., P.Mabee, P.Manning, L.M., S.T.M., D.S.P., T.M.P., S.P.-M., C.A.R., M.R., H.S., B.S., M.J.S., R.J.T., J.A.T., C.V., R.W., K.C.B.W., M.W., I.J.W. and B.J.E.
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Gallagher, R.V., Falster, D.S., Maitner, B.S. et al. Open Science principles for accelerating trait-based science across the Tree of Life. Nat Ecol Evol 4, 294–303 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1109-6
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