Table 1.

Main elements of the harmonised AusTraits database. See Tables 2–8 for details on each component.

Element	Contents
traits	A table containing measurements of plant traits.
sites	A table containing observations of site characteristics associated with information in ‘traits’. Cross referencing between the two dataframes is possible using combinations of the variables ‘dataset_id’, ‘site_name’.
contexts	A table containing observations of contextual characteristics associated with information in ‘traits’. Cross referencing between the two dataframes is possible using combinations of the variables ‘dataset_id’, ‘context_name’.
methods	A table containing details on methods with which data were collected, including time frame and source.
excluded_data	A table of data that did not pass quality test and so were excluded from the master dataset.
taxa	A table containing details on taxa associated with information in ‘traits’. This information has been sourced from the APC (Australian Plant Census) and APNI (Australian Plant Name Index) and is released under a CC-BY3 license.
definitions	A copy of the definitions for all tables and terms. Information included here was used to process data and generate any documentation for the study.
sources	Bibtex entries for all primary and secondary sources in the compilation.
contributors	A table of people contributing to each study.
taxonomic_updates	A table of all taxonomic changes implemented in the construction of AusTraits. Changes are determined by comparing against the APC (Australian Plant Census) and APNI (Australian Plant Name Index).
build_info	A description of the computing environment used to create this version of the dataset, including version number, git commit and R session_info.