Morphological and Geographical Traits of the British Odonata

By

Powney, Gary
Brooks, Stephen J. (Stephen John), 1955-
Barwell, Louise
Bowles, Phil
Fitt, Robert
Pavitt, Alyson
Spriggs, Rebecca
Isaac, Nick

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2014-01-29

Original Publication

Biodiversity data journal

Volume

2

Pages

1--12

Subjects

Body size , distribution status , generation time , habitat preference , Odonata , trait data , wing length

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia Pensoft Publishers [2013]-

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.2.e1041
eLocator: e1041

 

Abstract

Trait data are fundamental for many aspects of ecological research, particularly for modeling species response to environmental change. We synthesised information from the literature (mainly field guides) and direct measurements from museum specimens, providing a comprehensive dataset of 26 attributes, covering the 43 resident species of Odonata in Britain. Traits included in this database range from morphological traits (e.g. body length) to attributes based on the distribution of the species (e.g. climatic restriction). We measured 11 morphometric traits from five adult males and five adult females per species. Using digital callipers, these measurements were taken from dry museum specimens, all of which were wild caught individuals. Repeated measures were also taken to estimate measurement error. The trait data are stored in an online repository (https://github.com/BiologicalRecordsCentre/Odonata_traits), alongside R code designed to give an overview of the morphometric data, and to combine the morphometric data to the single value per trait per species data.