Table 2.

Structure of the traits table, containing measurements of plant traits.

key	value
dataset_id	Primary identifier for each study contributed into AusTraits; most often these are scientific papers, books, or online resources. By default should be name of first author and year of publication, e.g. ‘Falster_2005’.
taxon_name	Currently accepted name of taxon in the Australian Plant Census or in the Australian Plant Name Index.
site_name	Name of site where individual was sampled. Cross-references to identical columns in ‘sites’ and ‘traits’.
context_name	Name of contextual senario where individual was sampled. Cross-references to identical columns in ‘contexts’ and ‘traits’.
observation_id	A unique identifier for the observation, useful for joining traits coming from the same ‘observation_id’. These are assigned automatically, based on the ‘dataset_id’ and row number of the raw data.
trait_name	Name of trait sampled.
value	Measured value.
unit	Units of the sampled trait value after aligning with AusTraits standards.
date	Date sample was taken, in the format ‘yyyy-mm-dd’, but with days and months only when specified.
value_type	A categorical variable describing the type of trait value recorded.
replicates	Number of replicate measurements that comprise the data points for the trait for each measurement. A numeric value (or range) is ideal and appropriate if the value type is a ‘mean’, ‘median’, ‘min’ or ‘max’. For these value types, if replication is unknown the entry should be ‘unknown’. If the value type is ‘raw_value’ the replicate value should be 1. If the value type is ‘expert_mean’, ‘expert_min’, or ‘expert_max’ the replicate value should be ‘na’.
original_name	Name given to taxon in the original data supplied by the authors