DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18201647
title: Ranges Network collected mammal trait measurements and summary from western North America

description: Over the past two decades, digitization of U.S. vertebrate collections has opened critical temporal, spatial, and taxonomic information from specimens, stimulating new levels of data sharing and significantly advancing biodiversity knowledge. However, still missing are the specimen-level trait data essential for establishing faunal baselines and informing predictions of global change response. We propose the Ranges Digitization Network (Ranges), which will close this gap by mobilizing an estimated >5 million trait measurements from 1.2 million specimens from Western North America (WNA). WNA is a region of high temperate mammal diversity and a natural laboratory for studying speciation, phenotypic diversification, biogeographic principles, and community assembly over deep and shallow timescales. To build capacity for transformative research in these areas, Ranges brings together a digitization network of 19 institutions, expands informatics tools for trait extraction and standardization from specimen records, and immediately (in Year 1) provisions specimen-linked trait data in usable form via existing portals. The specific goals of Ranges will be to: 1) Digitize traits from 1.2 million mammal specimens, append these to digital records, and publish openly in community repositories; 2) digitize, georeference, and mobilize four regionally significant mammal collections, making their data research-ready for the first time; and 3) develop dense, intraspecific-level 3D image resources for >3,500 mammal specimens to facilitate acquisition of complex internal traits that can be linked to complimentary, specimen-level datasets existing in an extended specimen network. 

 

The Ranges Project

Ranges is an NSF-funded project that seeks to digitize traits from over one million mammal specimens from 19 natural history museums, with a focus on western North America.

The project will allow researchers to build better baselines for biodiversity and improve predictions of how mammals respond to changing environments to address major digitization challenges, expand the utility of specimens and use them to create new scientific knowledge.

Website: https://ranges-network.org/

 

Give Credit Where Credit is Due

Please cite this Zenodo resource AND any additional DOIs from individual institutional downloads.

 

Ranges Baseline Sources

The Ranges Baseline Trait Collection contains 19 datasets downloaded from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) in January/February of 2024. The institutions represented are all participants in the Ranges Network. The purpose of this dataset is (1) to provide a baseline of the traits digitized by the 19 Ranges institutional participants prior to the start of the Ranges digitization effort, and (2) to update the FuTRES traits index to include occurrenceIDs for each record in the FuTRES traits portal (https://futres-data-interface.netlify.app/).

Source Institutions (for a complete list of citations see the document, SourceDataset_DOIs.tsv.:








Date



Institution



DOI





20240227



ASU, Arizona State University



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.pztqzk





20240110



CAS, California Academy of Sciences



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.897qq5





20240227



CSULB, California State University, Long Beach



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.cfh4uq





20240110



DMNS, Denver Museum of Nature and Science



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.v5y2pr





20240227



FMNH, Field Museum of Natural History



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.gzuptm





20240110



HSUVM, California Polytechnic Univ. Humboldt, Vertebrate Museum



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.tyds38





20240227



KU, Univ. of Kansas Natural History Museum



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.7g7j8m





20240227



LACM, Natural History Museum of LA County



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.9hrst8





20240225



MSB, Univ. of New Mexico, Museum of Southwestern Biology



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.5wwfu9





20240225



MVZ, Univ. of California Berkeley, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.5mbsge





20240110



TCWC, Texas A&M Univ., Biodiversity Research & Teaching Collection



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.26eh3k





20240110



TTU, Texas Tech University



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.45wsbt





20240227



UAM, University of Alaska, Museum of the North



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.8c95qk





20240225



UMMZ, University of Michigan, Museum of Zoology



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.w7a35w





20240225



UMNH, Natural History Museum of Utah



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.2erdam





20240227



UMZM, Univ. of Montana, Philip L. Wright Zoological Museum



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.jevgd8





20240225



UNR, University of Nevada Museum of Natural History



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.fbcvye





20240225



UWBM, Univ. of Washington, Burke Museum



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.s5u9z5





20240227



UWYMV, University of Wyoming Museum of Vertebrates



https://doi.org/10.15468/dl.9wsn76






 

Traits represented in the Ranges Baseline

The Ranges Baseline dataset contains measurements for 56 specific mammal traits. A complete list of the traits is available in the attached file, Ranges Baseline Trait List.pdf.

 

Statistics for the Ranges Baseline

Record set info: 



1,849,448 records

1,779,593 occurrenceIDs

19 institutions


Measurements across all traits (total): 



2,941,833


Taxonomic Representation*:

Percent of Extracted Digital Traits by Mammalian Order - See attached file, Graphic_ Percent of Extracted Digital Traits by Mammalian Order.pdf.

Each layer of the plot depicts cumulative percent of traits available per taxonomic Order. The outer layer shows values for all traits, and the inner two layers show values for just morphological and reproductive traits, respectively. Only data that were mappable to a formerly or currently recognized mammalian order were considered.

Measurements per trait (summary): 



mean 52,532.73

median 3401.5

range 0 - 437,752


Measurements per trait (all, ordered) (6 columns): 








Trait



Total Meas.



Trait



Total Meas.



Trait



Total Meas.





hind_foot_length_mm



437752



pregnancy_state



14085



mammary_count



266





total_length_mm



409444



tragus_length_mm



13370



tail_length_ambiguous



234





tail_length_mm



391253



hind_foot_length_units_inferred



12320



ear_length_estimated



123





body_mass_grams



388288



embryo_size_length_mm



9541



ovary_length_mm



84





ear_length_mm



344047



embryo_count_right



7624



hind_foot_length_estimated



81





hind_foot_length_includes



335367



embryo_count_left



7417



ovary_width_mm



79





ear_length_measured_from



233196



placental_scar_count



7187



placental_scars_side_1



49





total_length_units_inferred



42786



forearm_length_units_inferred



3685



placental_scars_both_sides



47





tail_length_units_inferred



35685



placental_scars_right_side



3652



placental_scars_side_2



47





placental_scars_present



31274



embryo_size_units_inferred



3151



ovary_description



9





ear_length_units_inferred



27396



placental_scars_left_side



3066



forearm_length_estimated



5





total_length_ambiguous



23875



body_mass_estimated



1857



embryo_count_males



5





vagina_state



22708



total_length_estimated



1357



tragus_length_estimated



3





body_mass_ambiguous



22277



tail_length_estimated



1267



embryo_count_females



3





body_mass_units_inferred



22013



mammary_state



1113



embryo_count_side_1



2





lactation_state



21317



tragus_length_units_inferred



932



embryo_count_side_2



2





forearm_length_mm



21257



embryo_size_width_mm



299



ovary_size_units_inferred



1





embryo_count



20585



gonad_length_mm



273



gonad_size_units_inferred



0





ear_length_ambiguous



17808



gonad_width_mm



269

 
 





 

Measurements per institution (all, ordered): 








institutionCode



total measurements



institutionCode



total measurements





MSB



1095463



CAS



37027





UAM



542499



HSU



34556





UWBM



354348



UNR



15002





MVZ



203000



ASU



3304





TTU



189785



UWYMV



1284





LACM



136305



CSULB



0





DMNS



106071



FMNH



0





UMNH



96830



TCWC



0





KU



69774



UMMZ



0





UMZM



56585

 
 





 

Statistics Per Institution

A complete tally of the number of trait measurements by institution per trait type is available in the attached file, Ranges Baseline Traits: Measurements per Trait by Institution.pdf.

 

*Disclaimer

Some taxonomic names in this collection may be assigned to non-mammalian taxa or may no longer be valid. All data are presented as downloaded from GBIF.org. Users of this data are responsible for their own data quality and completeness checking. The Ranges Network is not responsible for the quality and completeness of these data.