Towards interoperable and reusable trait data for ectotherms

ShareTrait is an open research initiative that streamlines the collection, standardisation, and reuse of individual‑level species trait data for ectotherms.

The project initally focuses on three core traits* that are fundamental to organismal fitness and ecological responses:

• Metabolic rate
• Development time
• Fecundity

• efforts are underways to expand (but more traits are underways)

To understand how species respond and interact with their environment, more and more data are being collected on species traits. Despite the abundance of trait data, synthesis across studies is often limited by inconsistent formats, missing metadata, and a lack of interoperability. ShareTrait addresses these challenges by providing FAIR‑compliant pipelines, curated datasets, and a relational database that enable scalable, cross‑study analyses.

Our long‑term vision is to enable large‑scale ecological, evolutionary, and physiological synthesis by making trait data FAIR

Specifically, ShareTrait aims to:

• Lower barriers to data sharing
• Reduce duplication of effort
• Preserve rich metadata
• provide curated datasets
• Support transparent, open, and collaborative science

• ShareTraitDatabase – a relational SQL implementation of the ShareTrait data model
• Positional paper - highlighting the vision of ShareTrait: read paper
• Standardized Data Pipelines - data reformatting, phylogenetic tools, facilitation attribution to primary data sources

We warmly welcome new data contributions.

If you have published datasets on:

• Metabolic rate
• Development time
• Fecundity

If you use ShareTrait data or code, please cite:

Leiva, FP et al. (2025). ShareTrait: a data portal for making trait data interoperable and reusable (version 1.2.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14826294

Leiva, FP et al. (2025). ShareTrait: a data portal for making trait data interoperable and reusable (version 1.0.0) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8138904.

Leiva FP et al. (2025). ShareTrait: Towards interoperable and reusable individual trait-based data in ectotherms. Functional Ecology, 39, 3124–3138. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.70147

ShareTrait was initiated by:

• Wilco Verberk
• Jacintha Ellers
• Matty Berg
• Félix P. Leiva

Sharetrait received funding from: -the Dutch Research Council NWO through the Open Science Fund initiative.

If you have questions concerning the project, please get in touch with principal investigator, Wilco Verberk, by e-mail at wilco.verberk@sru.nl.