ABI Development: An Open-Access Global Repository of Plant and Animal Demographic Data

该项目将建立一个全面的、开放获取的动植物人口统计信息数据库，这将对研究人员、教育工作者和保护管理人员有用。尽管几十年来生物学家一直在收集世界各地成千上万个种群的个体生存、生长和繁殖速度的数据，但目前还不存在这样的集中存储库。这些基本的生物学数据可以为生物学领域内外的一系列科学研究提供信息，包括了解某些种群灭绝或入侵的原因，以及预测物种如何应对人为压力和全球变化。通过开发一个单一的、标准化的平台来存储和分析这些人口统计数据，该项目将为一系列用户提供重要的资源。例如，研究人员将能够直接向数据库提供他们的数据集，以及将这些人口统计数据与其他数据库（例如物种分布、基因序列、气候预测）联系起来，以进行大规模的比较研究。教师和学生将能够探索生命周期的变化，并通过遵循数据库附带的练习和教程进行基本分析。最后，濒危物种的管理者可以使用这些人口统计数据来更好地了解其种群的需求，并比较不同管理策略的影响（例如，增加繁殖与增加后代存活率相比）。人口存活率、生长率和繁殖率是衡量人口规模和结构如何随时间和空间变化的基本单位。因此，这些人口统计数据是一系列生物学研究的关键资源，从了解生命史的进化到预测物种对全球变化的反应。此外，人口研究倾向于遵循以矩阵人口模型的形式收集和呈现数据的标准化协议。这种标准化提供了一个难得的机会，可以在整个生命之树上进行大规模的比较分析。科学文献目前包含了全世界1500种植物和2000种动物的mpm，通常每个物种都有几个种群。mpm的独特数据结构和标准化分析需要统一的集中式存储库，以最大限度地利用这些有价值的数据。该项目旨在开发一个开放存取的mpm数据库，这将使研究人员能够利用数十年的人口监测数据，在全球、区域和地方尺度上进行比较分析。拟议的工作包括为mpm开发一个强有力的关系数据库管理系统，以人口统计专家和数据用户组成的国际小组对COMPADRE植物矩阵数据库和COMPADRE动物矩阵数据库的现有努力为基础。该团队将创建一个可公开访问的接口，以促进数据的使用，并使研究人员能够通过标准化的数据输入门户直接贡献他们的MPM数据集。此外，该项目的高级人员将开发教程和教学材料，并举办一系列研讨会，以吸引存储库的当前和潜在用户，包括研究人员、教育工作者和保护管理人员。这个项目的结果可以在http://www.compadre-db.org/上找到。

This project will create a comprehensive, open-access database of plant and animal demographic information that will be useful to researchers, educators, and conservation managers. No such centralized repository currently exists, although biologists have been collecting data on the rates with which individuals survive, grow, and reproduce for many decades, and from tens of thousands of populations around the world. These fundamental biological data can inform a range of scientific research within and outside of the field of biology, including understanding why certain populations go extinct or become invasive, and predicting how species may respond to anthropogenic pressures and global change. By developing a single, standardized platform for storing and analyzing these demographic data, this project will yield an important resource for a range of users. For example, researchers will be able to directly contribute their datasets into the repository, as well as to link these demographic data with other databases (e.g. on species distributions, genetic sequences, climate projections) to conduct large-scale comparative studies. Teachers and students will be able to explore variations in life cycles and carry out basic analyses by following the exercises and tutorials that will accompany the database. Finally, managers of threatened species can use these demographic data to better understand the needs of their populations and compare the impacts of different management strategies (e.g., increasing breeding compared to increasing offspring survival). The demographic rates of survival, growth, and reproduction are the basic units for measuring how populations change in size and structure through time and space. As such, these demographic data serve as key resources for a range of biological research, from understanding the evolution of life histories to predicting species responses to global change. Moreover, demographic studies tend to follow a standardized protocol for data collection and presentation in the form of matrix population models (MPMs). This standardization provides a rare opportunity to conduct large-scale comparative analyses across the tree of life. The scientific literature currently contains MPMs for 1,500 plant species and 2,000 animal species worldwide, often with several populations for each species. The distinctive data structure and standardized analyses for MPMs necessitate a uniform, centralized repository to maximize the utility of these valuable data. This project aims to develop an open-access repository of MPMs, which will allow researchers to leverage decades of demographic monitoring to conduct comparative analyses at global, regional, and local scales. The proposed work involves developing a robust relational database management system for MPMs, building upon existing efforts by an international team of demographic experts and data users on the COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database and COMADRE Animal Matrix Database. The team will create a publicly accessible interface to facilitate data usage and enable researchers to directly contribute their MPM datasets through a standardized data entry portal. Additionally, the project's senior personnel will develop tutorials and teaching materials, and conduct a series of workshops to engage current and potential users of the repository including researchers, educators, and conservation managers. The results of this project can be found at http://www.compadre-db.org/.