Introducing the COMADRE Animal Matrix Database

by Rob Salguero-Gomez on Oct 5, 2015

Coinciding with the 3rd annual Evolutionary Demography Society conference, in Lunteren (the Netherlands), we announce the release of COMADRE v.1.0.0, an open-access database for animal demography. COMADRE comes online nearly a year after the release of its sister database, the COMPADRE Plant Matrix Database.

COMADRE contains 345 animal species from 402 studies and 1,625 matrix population models of global distribution, ranging organisms as different as sponges, birds or mammals, including humans. The preprint of the manuscript introducing COMADRE is available in bioRxiv, and the manuscript is currently in review at Journal of Animal Ecology. Together with the release of COMADRE, we also release the new version of COMPADRE: v. 3.2.1. This version contains 637 plant species from 735 studies containing a total of 6,242 matrix population models.

These are the updated user guides for COMPADRE and COMADRE. In an effort to remain as transparent as possible in the data digitalisation and error-checks effected in the database, we also make available the internal data entry protocols. The release COMADRE coincides too with a new look to the portal for both databases. The main aspect of this portal is that user registration is no longer required, making these databases fully open data and open access. Upcoming workshops on the usage of these resources are planned for EvoDemoS (Oct 2015), BES (Dec 2015) and a weeklong course at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (April 2016, exact week TBA). We hope that the research community will use these databases for exciting ecological and evolutionary questions! Dr Rob Salguero-Gomez & Dr Owen Jones on behalf of the core committee PS: this is how our students (the COMPADRinos) feel about the release of COMADRE: