Data Provider Contact Details *

* Name | Alienor Jeliazkov |

* Email | cestes@idiv.de |

* Affiliation | German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Leipzig-Jena |

* Country | Germany |

Role *

Data_creator | true |

Data_manager | true |

Data_owner | true |

Primary_contact | true |

Research Group *

* Research_group | Biodiversity Synthesis |

Other-specify |  |

Dataset *

* Project_or_workshop_or_thesis_title | CESTES - A global database for metaCommunity Ecology: Species, Traits, Environment & Space |

* Dataset_title | A global database for metaCommunity Ecology: Species, Traits, Environment & Space - version 1.0 (CESTES-v1.0) |

* Short_abstract | We collated 90 datasets from trait-based studies and compiled them into "CESTES" and "ceste" databases. The "CESTES" database is composed of 80 datasets each of which includes four matrices: species community abundances or presences/absences across multiple sites, species trait information, environmental variables, and spatial coordinates of the sampling sites. The ancillary "ceste" database is composed of 10 additional datasets each of which includes the same type of information than CESTES, apart from the spatial coordinates and/or complete metadata information. The CESTES database is a live database: it will be maintained and expanded in the future. By its harmonized structure, and the diversity of ecosystem types, taxonomic groups, and spatial scales it covers, the CESTES database provides an important opportunity for synthetic trait-based research in community ecology. |

* Keywords | species abundances, species occurrence, traits, environment, space, global, community ecology, synthesis, plants, animals, freshwater, marine, terrestrial |

* Data_access_policy | Open (CC BY 4.0) |

Extensive_description_of_the_dataset | The 80 files currently in CESTES are structured into at least 8 sheets, depending on the original information and specificities of each dataset. The first four sheets include the processed core-data themselves: 1. "comm": matrix of species abundances or presences/absences, with species in columns and sites in rows (species are sometimes OTUs in some groups such as phytoplankton, or genus in some groups such as macroinvertebrates, or morphospecies where relevant) 2. "traits": matrix of species trait information, i.e. any trait, be it functional, biological, life-history traits, either quantitative or categorical, functional group, etc., with traits in columns and species in rows 3. "envir": matrix of environmental variables in the broad sense of environment, i.e. any type of biotic and abiotic conditions or habitat characteristics relevant to the community of interest according to the original publication, with variables in columns and sites in rows 4. "coord": matrix of spatial coordinates, with X, the longitude and Y, the latitude as columns (in the Geographical Coordinate System as used in the original study) and sites in rows. In every dataset, a "DataKey" sheet provides a description of all the entries of the four matrices. Specific comments and information about any alteration applied to the dataset can be found in the "Notes" sheet, e.g. the species, or variables that were removed due to missing information, how the trait values were averaged across species when several measurements were available, how the original dataset was split into several datasets when there were several sampling periods, etc. The contact person for each dataset is also specified at the top of the “Notes” sheet of the dataset. When the cleaning procedure implied changing the original datasets, we kept the information of the unaltered tables within the Excel file in separate sheets: “commfull”, “traitsfull”, “coordfull”, and/or “envirfull”. The "splist" sheet includes the full list of taxa and the "sitelist" sheet, the list of sites. Both can provide additional information about the species (e.g. taxonomic classification) and the sites (e.g. regional information) when specified by the authors. Note that the species (site) names might not appear in the “splist” (“sitelist”) of all the datasets; this is because some authors preferred to provide their data in a redacted form, for instance, by censoring the species or the site names. As this does not hamper most of the analyses in community ecology, these datasets were integrated in the database. Finally, when trait information was semi-quantitative and already fuzzy coded, we added a sheet "blo" to specify the Blocks information that is needed for weighting procedures in some trait analyses. For more information, see: Jeliazkov A., (...) & J. Chase (2019) A global database for metacommunity ecology integrating species, traits, environment and space. Scientific Data. |

Data_origin | Data Compilation |

Other-specify |  |

Status_of_the_data_collection | Completed |

Persons Associated With Dataset ( 1 )

Name | Alienor Jeliazkov |

Email | alienor.jeliazkov@gmail.com |

Affiliation | German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig |

Country | Germany |

Role

Data_creator | true |

Data_manager | true |

Data_owner | true |

Primary_contact | true |

Research Group

Research_group | Biodiversity Synthesis |

Other-specify |  |

Persons Associated With Dataset ( 2 )

Name | Jonathan Chase |

Email | jonathan.chase@idiv.de |

Affiliation |  |

Country | Germany |

Habitat

Terrestrial | true |

Freshwater | true |

Marine | true |

Taxonomic Scope

Animalia | true |

Plantae | true |

Fungi |  |

Bacteria | true |

Virus |  |

Microorganism | true |

Temporal Cover

Date of first Record

Year | 1979 |

Month |  |

Day |  |

Date of last Record

Year | 2015 |

Month |  |

Day |  |

Temporal Resolution

Temporal_resolution | Not Relevant |

Other-specify |  |

Spatial Cover

Coverage | Global |

Locality_names |  |

Country |  |

Additional Information

How_to_cite_dataset | Jeliazkov & the CESTES consortium (2019) A global database for metaCommunity Ecology: Species, Traits, Environment and Space - version 1.0 (CESTES v1.0) |

Dataset_doi_or_url | https://doi.org/10.25829/idiv.286-21-2695 |

Publications_based_on_this_dataset | Jeliazkov A., (...) & J. Chase, 2019. A global database for metacommunity ecology: species, traits, environment and space. Scientific Data (in press) |

Projects_that_are_related_to_this_dataset |  |

Comments | The following authors also contributed to the database: Darko Mijatovic, Nigel Andrew, Raphaël Arlettaz, Luc Barbaro, Nadia Barsoum, Alena Bartonova, Elena Belskaya, Núria Bonada, Anik Brind'Amour, Rodrigo Carvalho, Helena Castro, Damian Chmura, Philippe Choler, Karen Chong-Seng, Daniel Cleary, Anouk Cormont, William Cornwell, Ramiro de Campos, Nicole de Voogd, Sylvain Doledec, Joshua Drew, Frank Dziock, Anthony Eallonardo, Melanie J. Edgar, Fábio Farneda, Domingo Flores Hernandez, Cédric Frenette-Dussault, Guillaume Fried, Belinda Gallardo, Heloise Gibb, Thiago Gonçalves-Souza, Janet Higuti, Jean-Yves Humbert, Boris R. Krasnov, Eric Le Saux, Zoe Lindo, Adria Lopez-Baucells, Elizabeth Lowe, Bryndis Marteinsdottir, Koen Martens, Peter Meffert, Andres Mellado-Díaz, Myles H. M. Menz, Christoph Meyer, Joan Pino, Julia Ramos Miranda, David Mouillot, Alessandro Ossola, Robin Pakeman, Sandrine Pavoine, Burak Pekin, Arnaud Pocheville, Francesco Pomati, Peter Poschlod, Honor C. Prentice, Oliver Purschke, Valerie Raevel, Triin Reitalu, Willem Renema, Ignacio Ribera, Natalie Robinson, Bjorn Robroek, Ricardo Rocha, Sen-Her Shieh, Rebecca Spake, Monika Staniaszek-Kik, Michal Stanko, Francisco Leonardo Tejerina-Garro, Cajo ter Braak, Mark C. Urban, Roel van Klink, Sébastien Villéger, Ruut Wegman, Martin J. Westgate, Jonas Wolff, Jan Żarnowiec, Maxim Zolotarev. |