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15 February 2020 Patterns in research and data sharing for the study of form and function in caviomorph rodents
Luis D. Verde Arregoitia, Pablo Teta, Guillermo D'Elía
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Abstract

The combination of morphometrics, phylogenetic comparative methods, and open data sets has renewed interest in relating morphology to adaptation and ecological opportunities. Focusing on the Caviomorpha, a well-studied mammalian group, we evaluated patterns in research and data sharing in studies relating form and function. Caviomorpha encompasses a radiation of rodents that is diverse both taxonomically and ecologically. We reviewed 41 publications investigating ecomorphology in this group. We recorded the type of data used in each study and whether these data were made available, and we re-digitized all provided data. We tracked two major lines of information: collections material examined and trait data for morphological and ecological traits. Collectively, the studies considered 63% of extant caviomorph species; all extant families and genera were represented. We found that species-level trait data rarely were provided. Specimen-level data were even less common. Morphological and ecological data were too heterogeneous and sparse to aggregate into a single data set, so we created relational tables with the data. Additionally, we concatenated all specimen lists into a single data set and standardized all relevant data for phylogenetic hypotheses and gene sequence accessions to facilitate future morphometric and phylogenetic comparative research. This work highlights the importance and ongoing use of scientific collections, and it allows for the integration of specimen information with species trait data.

© 2020 American Society of Mammalogists, www.mammalogy.org This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
Luis D. Verde Arregoitia, Pablo Teta, and Guillermo D'Elía "Patterns in research and data sharing for the study of form and function in caviomorph rodents," Journal of Mammalogy 101(2), 604-612, (15 February 2020). https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyaa002
Received: 17 September 2019; Accepted: 27 December 2019; Published: 15 February 2020
KEYWORDS
collections
digitization
functional traits
relational
Rodentia
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