Nest traits for the world’s birds

Abstract

AbstractMotivationA well-constructed nest is a key element of successful reproduction in most species of birds, and nest-building strategies vary widely across the class. Macroecological and macroevolutionary studies tend to group nest design into a small number of discrete categories, often based on taxonomic inference. In reality, however, many species display considerable intraspecific variation in their nest-building behaviour, and broad-level categories may include many functionally distinct nest types. To address this confusion in the literature and facilitate future studies of broad-scale variation in avian parental care, we here introduce a detailed, global comparative database of nest building in birds, together with preliminary correlations between these traits and species-level environmental variables.Main types of variable containedWe present species-level data for nest structure, location, height, material composition, sex of builder, building time, and nest dimensions.Spatial location and grainGlobal. Maps are presented at the 1°x1° level.Time period and grainIncluded species are generally extant, although we present some data for recently extinct taxa. The data was collected 2017-2021 and was drawn from secondary sources published 1992-2021.Major taxa and level of measurementPartial or complete trait data is presented for 8,601 species of birds, representing 36 of 36 orders and 239 of 243 families.Software formatData have been uploaded as Supplementary Material in .xlsx format and are separated by species and source for all traits (S1) as well as summarised at the species level for structure and location variables (S2).