Inclusion Criterions
As the aim of Malddaba is to encompass the widest number of populations from peer-reviewed sources. There are two main inclusion criterions for age-specific demographic data to be included in the database:
  • Data should either be published in either a scientific article, a book or book chapter, or an official unpublished report (e.g. MSc or PhD theses, Federal reports, reports from specialist groups, …), or come from a population which was the subject of prior scientific publications (in that case data are directly provided by the owner and the owner has agreed for those data to be displayed in malddaba).
  • Only raw demographic parameters are reported when available. As the primary focus of the database is to compare age-specific parameters across populations and species, standardized demographic parameters such as residuals of models are not considered in this database. When raw data were not available, age-specific estimates from the best-fitted model retained by the authors were extracted.
Age specific demographic data reported
Most demographic data presented in this database come from years of compilation from our group. Demographic data were reported from any scientific source whether it is a scientific journal article, a book or a doctoral thesis. All presentations for the age-specific data are considered whether they are presented in a table, text, graph or as supplementary information of an article. When multiple sources of data were available, we prioritized numeric values of the parameters. Due to the increasing amount of literature reporting age-specific demographic data, the database will be updated regularly. For now, two main types of age-specific demographic data are reported:

 Survival data

Survival data correspond to any age-specific data that include information on mortality1, survival2, survivorship3, age-specific distribution of alive individuals or age-specific distribution of dead individuals. For survival data, the type of data reported mainly depends on the type of monitoring used to estimate survival. We differentiate between the 3 types of monitoring:
  • Longitudinal when individuals are monitored throughout their lifetime often using mark-recapture approaches. In this case we always reported the survival probability associated (mean_parameter column) with the number of individuals alive at the beginning of the age-class (N_alive column) and the number of dead individuals at the end of the age-class (N_dead column) when available.
  • Transversal_dx when only the age of dead individuals is monitored, such as when only carcasses of individuals are collected and aged. In this case we only reported the distribution of dead individuals (N_dead column). Because we did not want to make strong assumptions regarding the growth rate of the population, the age-specific survival obtained from the analysis of the age at death distribution was provided only as a modelled parameter when available in the data source.
  • Transversal_lx when only the age of alive individuals is reported, such as when hunted individuals are collected and aged. In this case we only reported the distribution of alive individuals (N_alive column). Because we did not want to make strong assumptions regarding the growth rate of the population, the age-specific survival obtained from the analysis of the distribution of alive individuals was provided only as a modelled parameter when available in the data source.

 Reproduction data

Reproduction data correspond to all kinds of data which include information on mx4, litter size5, number of offspring6, probability to produce offspring7, juvenile survival8, or some combination of these traits at some offspring developmental time. For every reproduction metric, the average value for each age-class was reported (mean_parameter column) along with the age-specific sample size (N_alive colum) when available. Note that by default for species with birth pulse type of reproduction, reproduction is typically happening at start_age value. In that case the value for the entire age class corresponds to the mean yearly estimate for that specific class.

In addition to the value of the age-specific data, general information about the population and the methodology are reported in malddaba:

 Species information

Genus, species, and subspecies names are reported when available in association to the Catalogue of life ID. For the species name we used the standard Catalogue of Life nomenclature

 Location information

Country name, location name and GPS coordinates (in hexadecimal format) are reported. Note that we used the GPS coordinates as presented in the data source. When the GPS coordinates were not displayed, we tried to come up with GPS coordinates associated or as close as possible to the study location.

 Monitoring information

The information reported here is the type of monitoring, the start date of the monitoring as well as the duration of monitoring in years. Total sample size is also reported with either the total number of unique individuals followed or the total number of captures. An exhaustive description of each column associated with each dataset extracted is available either in the README file associated with each malddaba extraction or in the original malddaba publication.

 References

References formatted in APA style are reported in malddaba as well as the DOI if available.

Glossary
  1. Mortality: proportion of individuals dying between the starting and the ending age of a specific age-class.
  2. Survival: proportion of individuals surviving between the starting and the ending age of a specific age-class. Note that the rate of survival is 1 minus the rate of mortality.
  3. lx or Survivorship: percentage of individuals still alive at age x.
  4. mx: average number of daughters of age 0 produced by a female at age x.
  5. Litter size: average number of offspring per successful breeding attempt (i.e. litter in mammals) produced by a mother in a specific age-class.
  6. Number of offspring: average number of offspring surviving to some age produced by a female in a specific age-class including both daughters and sons.
  7. Probability to produce offspring: proportion of females producing offspring surviving to some age in a specific age-class including both daughters and sons.
  8. Juvenile survival: average probability for a newborn to survive to a given age or life stage.