The Ecological Register (original) (raw)

The Ecological Register is a repository for published lists and counts of plants and animals from individual locations around the world. It is intended for use by ecologists and students who want quick and simple access to spatially localized species abundance distributions, and is particularly useful for macroecological studies of diversity patterns.

Data are entered over the web by professional researchers with an interest in ecology. The site is hosted by the Australian Astronomical Optics group at Macquarie University. It is administered by John Alroy, and technical support is provided by Simon O'Toole at AAO.

Right now, you can use the site to view individual ecological samples, species, or references to the papers that were consulted. All of the Register data can be downloaded, and there is a a stand-alone size measurement download form. You can explore the data by using graphs to compare samples, making scatter plots, and creating biogeographic maps. And you can view maps of samples that indicate species richness with point colours. Major groups include:

• ants

• bats

• bees

• birds

• butterflies

• carnivores

• frogs

• [ground beetles](?a=map&life%5Fforms=ground beetles)

• lizards

• mosquitoes

• odonates

• orthopterans

• rodents

• [scarab (dung) beetles](?a=map&life%5Fforms=scarab beetles)

• snakes

• spiders

• trees

• turtles

• ungulates

There are also global fossil vertebrate data for the Pleistocene and Holocene, plus European data for the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene.

The Register is intended to complement databases such as GBIF, PREDICTS, the Mammal Community Database, AmphibiaWeb, FishBase, and NOW that are related intellectually but have very different scopes and purposes.