Trait Data Integration from the Perspective of a Data Aggregator

The Encyclopedia of Life currently hosts ~8M attribute records for ~400k taxa (March 2019, not including geographic categories, Fig. 1). Our aggregation priorities include Essential Biodiversity Variables (Kissling et al. 2018) and other global scale research data priorities. Our primary strategy remains partnership with specialist open data aggregators; we are also developing tools for the deployment of evolutionarily conserved attribute values that scale quickly for global taxonomic coverage, for instance: tissue mineralization type (aragonite, calcite, silica...); trophic guild in certain clades; sensory modalities. To support the aggregation and integration of trait information, data sets should be well structured, properly annotated and free of licensing or contractual restrictions so that they are ‘findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable’ for both humans and machines (FAIR principles; Wilkinson et al. 2016). To this end, we are improving the documentation of protocols for the transformation, curation, and analysis of EOL data, and associated scripts and software are made available to ensure reproducibility. Proper acknowledgement of contributors and tracki