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Towards a vertebrate demographic data bank

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Abstract

The development of computers, appropriate statistical methodology and specialized software has induced an explosion in empirical research on vertebrate population dynamics. Many long-term programs have led to impressive datasets and to the publication of hundreds of estimates of vital rates critical to many areas of ecology: evolution of life history strategies, conservation biology, behavioral ecology, population management, etc. Such estimates are still usually available through regular scientific articles, and their use for comparative purposes suffers from several shortcomings: duplication of technical work, lack of evaluation of methodological bias, and difficulties in linking vital rates estimates with other basic traits such as body size. It thus seems it is time to propose a demographic databank to collect the information on vertebrate demography published and being published and make it widely available. The resulting database should become the equivalent for vertebrate demography to what “Genbank” is for DNA sequences. Bird demography has a critical mass of knowledge adequate for a first step. This paper reviews, based on a prototype database, the outline of such a project of demographic database: type of data and estimates stored, assessment of methodology and data quality, data documentation, taxonomical and phylogenetical information, link with other existing biodiversity databases, procedures for depositing information, links with scientific journals, etc. The contours of a collaborative group to launch such a project are also discussed.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Pierre-André Crochet and an anonymous referee for useful comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CEFE, CNRS, 1919 Route de Mende, 34 293, Montpellier Cedex 5, France

    Jean-Dominique Lebreton, Simon Popy, Marine Desprez & Aurélien Besnard

  2. Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, 69622, Villeurbanne, France

    Sébastien Devillard & Jean-Michel Gaillard

Authors
  1. Jean-Dominique Lebreton
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  2. Sébastien Devillard
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  3. Simon Popy
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  4. Marine Desprez
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  5. Aurélien Besnard
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  6. Jean-Michel Gaillard
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jean-Dominique Lebreton.

Additional information

Communicated by M. Schaub.

Based on a communication at the EURING 2009 conference, Pescara, Italy, September 14–20, 2009.

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Lebreton, JD., Devillard, S., Popy, S. et al. Towards a vertebrate demographic data bank. J Ornithol 152 (Suppl 2), 617–624 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-010-0582-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-010-0582-0

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