Trait data resources for understanding mammalian response to changing environments

Monitoring life on a changing planet requires open and continuously updated biodiversity data and a workforce capable of leveraging these for trend analysis and prediction. But, which data? And what kind of workforce training? This talk will discuss my lab’s use of phenotypic traits as windows into mammalian growth, survival, and reproduction, and our field- and museum-based approach to answering trait-based questions. First, I will present work on energetically expensive traits that are seasonally plastic in small mammals, including body size, brain size, and gastrointestinal size and form. Developing new trait proxies and deploying them in local ecosystems has provided exciting insights in small mammal biology in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Second, I will discuss the limited landscape of open trait data for mammals globally and highlight my leadership of a consortium of North American mammal collections in digitizing specimen-level traits. Liberating historical trait data is massively scaling up our understanding of life history trade-offs and response to change across North America. Finally, I will discuss the overarching importance of the UNCG Biodiversity Collections for this work and how combining fieldwork and specimen-based research is introducing a new generation of STEM students at UNCG to ecological and evolutionary concepts through data-rich biodiversity science.