Home About TRY Data Portal Feedback Registration


Contact

  • Jens Kattge: jkattge-at-bgc-jena.mpg.de (project coordination, content and science, database management)
  • Sandra Díaz: sdiaz-at-efn.uncor.edu (content and science)
  • Gerhard Boenisch: boenisch-at-bgc-jena.mpg.de (technical issues, database management, web administration)

Feedback

If you've found this web site useful or would like to send any comment on the TRY initiative please e-mail us or provide feedback in the forum below. We'd like to know how the TRY website is being used.

If you have cited the TRY initiative in a publication, please send us that reference. This will help to document that the TRY initiative has value, and will help if / when we look for additional funding.

Thank you.

Jens Kattge and Gerhard Boenisch, on behalf of the TRY initiative.

Forum

Here you can participate in the discussion (Registration required).

Pan Shengnan on 2023-05-18 09:59:53Dear TRY team, I try to download that dataset again, but fail. The web page still display the file cannot be made available. Best wishes
Jens Kattge on 2023-05-17 12:42:33Dear Pan, we had reached space limit on the server. Now we have resolved that problem and it should be possible again to do download the data. Please let us know if you should still encounter problems. With best wishes, Jens
Pan Shengnan on 2023-05-17 11:52:40Dear TRY team, I am very thankful for your amazing database. I cannot download a database named Imputing missing data in plant traits: a guide to improve gap-filling (data). in TRY File Archive, because the web page shows the file cannot be made available. I wonder how I can download this dataset successfully. Best Wishes
Adam Richard-Bollans on 2023-03-22 10:43:00Dear Jens & Gerhard, Thank you both for your clarification of this issue. The reference doesnt appear to mention/link to any Chinese Traits dataset which might contain this information, but I will try to get in touch with the dataset custodian.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2023-03-22 09:32:44Dear Adam - We have to rely on the custodians of the particular dataset that the provided reference is correct. We standardize and compare the data between datasets to make sure the data are reasonable. With about 800 datastes however, we do not have the man power to check each species mentioning in each publication. Please directly contact the dataset custodian on such matters.
Jens Kattge on 2023-03-22 06:54:06Dear Adam, the reference you mentioned links to dataset 236: Chinese Traits (PI Sandy Harrison). This dataset is based on a measurement campaign across northern China and contains data for 46 traits, mostly characterising leaf attributes, among other leaf emergences.
Adam Richard-Bollans on 2023-03-21 23:15:59Dear TRY team, I am slightly confused about a reference given in the dataset. For example, for trait 677 (Leaf emergences (pubescence, pruinescence, hairs, spines, thorns)) there is an entry for Allium senescens from the Chinese Traits dataset. The given reference is "Prentice, I.C., Meng, T., Wang, H., Harrison, S.P., Ni, J., Wang, G., 2011. Evidence for a universal scaling relationship of leaf CO2 drawdown along a moisture gradient. New Phytologist 190: 169-180". However, this reference makes no mention of this species or emergences of leaves. Is this reference incorrect, or am I misinterpreting something? Cheers, Adam
Gerhard Boenisch on 2023-03-07 09:35:43Dear Erik - Which request are you talking about? We have too many.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2023-03-07 09:34:27Dear Tao - Due to lack of man power, the species information has not been updated.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2023-03-07 09:33:03Dear Sarah - We standardize Lat/Lon and convert it to doubles. I do not understand, if you talk about the Data Explorer or the TRY data output. There are special columns for Lat/Lon in the Data Explorer. The data output is in long table format. Please read the supplied data release notes.
Tao Zeng on 2023-03-04 08:26:03Dear TRY team, I am very grateful for this great database platform, but recently I have encountered a problem. I found that the taxonomic information of some recently submitted species could not be found in the TRY_Categorical_Traits_Lookup_Table_2012_03_17_TestRelease.xlsx released by Categorical traits for the species in the TRY database. I dont know if the species categorical information has not been updated since it was published in 2012, or if I didnt find it. Either way many thanks to the TRY team for their great contribution. Best Regards
Erik Sivan on 2023-02-17 15:29:38Dear TRY team, I am very thankful of your database. Today when i submit my data request i cannot find thr record on the Request PI but my email received the request information. I wonder whether i submit my request successfully. Best Regards
Sarah Tepler Drobnitch on 2022-12-15 05:51:46Dear TRY team, Thanks so much for supporting this amazing resource. The FET database has many traits Id like to work with, but Im unable to find Lat/Long/Alt data within the dataset. Normally, lat, long, etc. are datanames with strvalues, correct? Im not sure what Im missing.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2022-12-01 09:13:44Dear Leonid - There is no interface for this. Send me the information by email please. Include upload and dataset IDs
Hunter Mackin on 2022-11-30 01:05:19Dear TRY Team, I am currently looking to find specific plant traits (particularly 186) to model generalized C3 and C4 grasses. However, Im not quite sure how to filter out all the other non-grass species. I also want to keep a distinction between C3/C4 grasses, but I dont want to introduce bias by choosing only a select few species. Is there an established method to do something like this?
Leonid Ivanov on 2022-11-28 09:14:13Hello! I have published some of my data posted in the database. How and where can I enter publication data?
Jens Kattge on 2022-08-08 07:08:17Dear Eleinis- Many thanks for your comment on the Data on Huber value in TRY. Yes, we would be interested in checking these data in TRY directly. Please contact me for more details!
Eleinis Avila-Lovera on 2022-08-03 00:20:51Hello! I really appreciate all you do to maintain this database. I recently downloaded all the publicly available Huber value (HV) data (trait 171), and after inspection of the datasets that have contributed towards HV, I found that many observation values were of leaf area to sapwood area ratio rather than HV. I calculated HV from these data, but fixing the problem within TRY may be suitable. I can provide more details if necessary (my email is eavil009@ucr.edu).
Gerhard Boenisch on 2022-06-23 17:16:15Dear Hongge - Read the Data Release Notes supplied
Gerhard Boenisch on 2022-06-23 17:15:05Dear Wangy - Administration -Edit Registration Data
Hongge Ren on 2022-06-22 17:11:55Dear TRY team, Thank you for this amazing resource. I am a relatively new user. I successfully downloaded data for a given set of trait records for all species which I have already defined in the data explorer. I imported the data into R and got a datafram with 28 columns. However, I also need some properties: 1- have leaf type (broadleaved vs. needle-leaved) and leaf phenology type (deciduous vs. evergreen) for tree species and 2- have information about geo-referenced records. Unfortunately I can find none of these information in description of TRY datasets. Do you have any suggestions to help me?
Wangy Yanlin on 2022-06-22 04:47:01Dear TRY team, when registering an account, some information was incorrectly filled in, how can I correct it?
Jens Kattge on 2022-05-12 11:11:38Dear Vanessa, you cannot change your email address or affiliation on the TRY website. To change your email address and affiliation, please email me (jkattge@bgc-jena.mpg.de), and Ill do this for you.
Jens Kattge on 2022-05-12 10:13:28Dear Miriam, Jiefeng and Moria, we had some problems concerning data releases. However, the issues are resolved, and we are getting back on track. You should have received notice about the release of data for your requests. Please accept our apologies for the delay and inconvenience.
Moria Robinson on 2022-05-05 22:31:19Dear TRY team, I am having trouble accessing the data associated with my request (20766; requested 4/25). I received an email on 4/29 stating that "The data for request 20766 have been released". I can navigate to the usual download page via the link in the email. However, when I click the "download" link I am directed to "page does not exist", and if I right click/save target as, a .html file is downloaded, not a linked .zip file. I notice that there is no unique name for the "filename" on the download page. It says "filename: taken". In previous queries to TRY, the download page has shown a unique identifier for the filename, for example "Filename: 20729_22042022204947.zip" Perhaps a file was overwritten? I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Moria
Jiefeng Kang on 2022-05-05 11:16:01Dear TRY team: 1. I have the same problem as Miriam García (post on 2022-05-03 10:54:52), that I havent got the data for my request (Request No: 20760) submitted on April 25th. Is it because of the holiday season and the sickness of the staff (as announced on the main page)? Or did I do it wrong? 2. I wonder if there is any API or R package to download the trait data? I saw a post (Gerhard Boenisch (UserID: 2, registered on 2012-03-22) on 2020-09-14 09:46:23) that mentioned that users can use R to process the data. But I can not find further details about that. 3. Is the forum like an email list under just one topic? Or I can go for details of each post by clicking it or some other operation? I tried clicking the post on Edge and Safari on a mac and nothing happened. Thank you for your time. Kang
Miriam García on 2022-05-03 10:54:52Dear TRY team, I sent out a data request a week ago and have not received a reply so far. I wonder if my operation is wrong or I need to wait. (Request No: 20765)
Vanessa Minden on 2022-03-04 12:04:25Dear TRY team, I changed university and would like that my new email adress is used in the correspondence with potential data-users. But on the webpage I cannot find where to change my affiliation, can anyone help? Thanks!!
Culi Tif on 2022-01-13 23:31:54Dear TRY team, this is an amazing and extremely useful project. Im a botany hobbyist/citizen scientist and also a web developer. I noticed your website got a 49% on a Lighthouse test for accessibility. I think theres a number of ways to increase the accessibility and presentation of the site and I was wondering if youd be interested in working on improving the design together
Zijun Ji on 2022-01-07 08:57:50Dear TRY team, I am curious about the units of each trait, like the Root rooting depth, the data explorer only provide the numer but without units
Zijun Ji on 2022-01-07 08:57:50Dear TRY team, I am curious about the units of each trait, like the Root rooting depth, the data explorer only provide the numer but without units
Maria Kunle on 2021-11-23 17:33:17Dear TRY, my name is Maria, I am working on my MSc thesis related to the functional traits of plants and I would like to use plant height from the TRY database but I am a little bit confused about the methods used for this or that measurements. In particular, there are: - 889 Crown (canopy) base height (ground to base) - 773 Crown (canopy) height (base to top) - 3107 Plant height generative - 3106 Plant height vegetative I am not sure which one I need if I want a height from the ground to the highest point of vegetation (to the very tip of the longest leaf so to say). The traits descriptions are still under construction, is there a place where I can learn how they were measured? And yeah, while I am at it, I would like to really thank you for creating and supporting this amazing database, I find it more than helpful!
Rebecca Hsu on 2021-11-18 10:04:06Dear TRY team, I am very appreciated that youve managed the database so well, and excited to find useful traits of my desire species. And certainly will contribute my data in the future. However, in the registration form, I found my country Taiwan is listed "province of China". I figured it out the problem was from "ISO 3166-1 name". Maybe you can fix it to "ISO 3166-2 codes", then my fellow scientists would be very grateful.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2021-05-25 11:47:08Dear liang ren - Thank you very much for making us aware of this. All temperatures in the file must be multiplied by 10 to be correct. We have updated the file to version 2 with the corrected temperatures. We are really sorry.
liang ren on 2021-05-21 12:13:48Dear TRY team, I may need your help. I am having problems with the attached site data( TRY File Archive ID:24), the maximum value for Mean Annual Temperature across all sites is only 3°C. I would like to know if I have got the units wrong or is there some other misunderstanding?
Gerhard Boenisch on 2021-04-20 11:10:07Dear Eloise - Where are you missing any units? Please be specific, enter DatesetID or URL. There are no missing units in TRY according to my knowledge.
Eloïse SAVINI on 2021-04-20 10:56:24Hello TRY Team, Id like to use your awesome database for my studies, but I cannot without scientific units (g, mm, m², etc), and I dont find how to use standardized units. Will a summary table be uploaded soon ? Thank you and have a good day.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2021-03-10 09:15:44Dear An - are you talking about the Data Explorer or the output for requests? Please indicate!
Gerhard Boenisch on 2021-03-10 09:14:12Dear Megha - You must see the restricted data as an opportunity. If we did not have this feature, these data simply would not be in the database.
An Van den Borre on 2021-01-26 02:29:58Hello TRY team, I have just discovered your site and was very excited about the initiative. However I am having problems finding information about traits. It seems to me that to enable contributors to record data for your system we need to be able to see the trait value options for each trait. Is there any way I can retrieve a list of this? I cannot find how to obtain trait information either. Please add some information. Many thanks and congratulations on a great initiative!
Megha Ojha on 2021-01-12 05:52:05Dear try team, The database is commendable. I feel that though the database claims to be open source, while requesting large set of data, most of the data which needs permission isnt released. That fails the purpose for research groups working with big data and looking up to TRY.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2020-09-21 09:50:40Dear Alex - Sampling dates are included in the TRY ouitput for requests as any other auxiliary data. It is also available from the Data Explorer.
Alex Hurley on 2020-09-21 09:34:30Dear TRY team, thanks for all the work! Is there a way to list/query a time stamp for individual measurements, or infer the temporal coverage of a contributed data set? Many thanks, Alex
Iris Hordijk on 2020-09-18 11:55:29Dear TRY team, Is it possible to publish multiple papers from one TRY data request? Is it also possible that not the first author, but the second author, was the one requesting the data? Thank you for the information!
Gerhard Boenisch on 2020-09-14 09:46:23Dear Anthony - there is only one output per request. You can do this in R on a powerful computer. Alternatively, you can submit more smaller requests.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2020-09-14 09:44:42Dear Lázaro - in the data release notes that are included in the output for each request and is available from About TRY - Administration. Furthermore in About TRY - Database in the section about outliers.
Anthony Benzig on 2020-09-14 08:50:53Dear TRY team, Is there any possibility to cut the txt-data into pieces? After request data for a little bit over 1000 species, I got the data of ALL Species. Now Im not able to work with the data I got. Is there any way to edit the species I want or to split the data into readable pieces? Thank you for your help.
Lázaro Rafael Sánchez-Velásquez on 2020-08-22 21:37:33Dear TRY team, could you help me? Please could you say me were I can see about definition of ErrorRisk? I can not fiand: Thank you.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2020-07-14 10:08:35Dear Juan Pedro - Thios is possible. Simply send us an email and we will take care. Gerhard
Juan Pedro Ferrio on 2020-07-14 09:02:23Dear TRY team, We are planning to upload a dataset that is part of a research article we are submitting (i.e. right now unpublished). Is it possible to update the metadata of a submitted dataset, e.g. to include the final reference once the paper is published? Thanks for your help
Rachel Mason on 2020-06-18 22:49:29Hi Gerhard et al., would you mind supplying some more details about how TRY flags duplicate measurements? Section 4.1.4 of the TRY Data Integration Workflow document gives an overview, but it would also be helpful to know (1) whether the geo-references and dates were truncated or rounded when they were compared, (2) how "similar" two trait values needed to be to be considered possible duplicates (specifically for trait 14, if that matters), and (3) whether "original publication" is synonymous with Primary Reference (DataID 113). I ask because I am merging TRY data with data from other sources and I would like to be consistent with how I identify measurements that might already be in TRY (or at least, properly understand how the TRY team did this). Thanks very much!
Gerhard Boenisch on 2020-05-01 12:39:50Dear Vinay - there are no limits on requests. It is however recommended to submit requests for traits instead of datasets.
Vinay Turpati on 2020-05-01 12:08:55Hi, Im working on a project, I need as much data as possible. Is there any limit to request datasets? If yes, can you tell me whats the threshold?
Gerhard Boenisch on 2020-04-30 18:51:51Dear Vinay - Trait values can only be obtained via a request. So, instead of selecting the measurement table, click the request button, if this is what you want.
Vinay Turpati on 2020-04-30 18:34:24Hello, when I opened "Request by dataset", I chose "Measurement table" but I couldnt find observation values correspond to ObservationId in the table.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2020-03-25 12:02:57Dear Rachel - Sorry for answering late. In the next version of TRY, we will include StdValueStr in the output. This will give you standardized date data. You are right concerning OrigObsDataID and ErrorRisk. The first points to the ObsDataID of the original in case of a duplicate. The second tells you how far the value is from a mean in units of standard deviations. Cheers Gerhard
Rachel Mason on 2020-03-23 17:06:04Hi again, I have been reading the description of the data cleaning carried out on data from TRY 3.0 in Bjorkman et al. (2018), Nature, 562, 7725. The cleaning included identifying duplicates and trait values that were likely to be erroneous. In TRY 5.0, it seems that this is no longer necessary - the OrigObsDataID column identifies likely duplicates, and the ErrorRisk gives a value that can be used to identify possible "problem" measurements. Is that correct? Thanks!
Rachel Mason on 2020-02-19 14:30:34Hi TRY team, I have a question about some of the metadata in the text files Ive downloaded. I see that latitude, longitude and sampling/measurement date are available as standardized metadata, and I can also see that the actual, standardized values of latitude and longitude live in the "StdValue" column. However, for observations that have dates, it seems that the standardized date (6601) values are found under "OrigValueStr". Is that correct? Can I assume that for DataID=6601, the standardized date data will always be in OrigValueStr instead of StdValue? Thanks for all your work in making this resource available!
Gerhard Boenisch on 2019-09-06 09:27:36Dear Dhio - I think you talk about the data explorer. As stated in the introduction and on every page in the header, the numbers are number of measurements, not trait values. You are very welcome to submit a request for trait values.
Dhio Hidayatullah Hutagaol on 2019-09-05 06:21:22Dear TRY Team, Im totally new to the database -- when I searched a specific species, what do the trait numbers mean? e.g. when I looked up for Zamia loddigesii (no 57376), the leaf type trait (no. 43) showed number 5. Is there any manuals for this? Thank sou so much (and sorry for the very basic question).
Gerhard Boenisch on 2019-07-17 11:16:24Dear Anh Tuan Dang-Le - What kind of features do you want to change? Since you talk about columns, are you meaning a dataset in the database or a file in the archive? It is probably best, if you send an email with screen shots for clarification, since this subject is probably not of interest in a oublic discussion.
Anh Tuan Dang-Le on 2019-07-17 09:57:33Dear TRY team, I am trying to change the features of my dataset in Manage Your Datasets. However, I could not find any option(s) to do that (there are no pop up, just a table of columns). Please help. Many thanks, Anh Tuan Dang-Le,
Gerhard Boenisch on 2019-07-01 11:58:49Dear Marc - sorry, this is not possible.
Marc Peaucelle on 2019-07-01 11:42:16Dear TRY Team, Is there any possibility to request traits data for a region/biome (as in the data explorer) without selecting specific traits or species? I am working on the heterogeneity of ecosystems. In order to capture that heterogeneity I would like to perform unsupervised analysis, but I am afraid that I will miss some key traits with the traitID request system. In addition, it will lower the dataset size by removing observations outside the region of interest. Thanks for your help, Marc
Gerhard Boenisch on 2019-06-22 11:11:56Dear Oguz - Number of measurements and number of geo-referenced measurements as stated in the header
Oguz Sariyildiz on 2019-06-21 18:53:46What are MeasNum and MeasGRNum fields?
Jens Kattge on 2019-04-15 09:49:09Dear Zhang Shuangshuang, please wait for a few days. If you do not receive a note from TRY please contact me via email: jkattge@bgc-jena.mpg.de
zhang shuangshuang on 2019-04-12 04:02:02Dear TRY team, I sent out a data request two weeks ago and have not received a reply so far. I wonder if my operation is wrong or I need to wait.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2019-03-19 09:10:01Dear Manasee - you will get an email with instructions once the files are ready for you. This usually takes a workday or two. With my compliments. Gerhard
Manasee Weerathunga on 2019-03-19 07:33:22Dear TRY team, Thank you very much for your amazing database which is really valuable. I did two data request today both which were public data. The request IDs are 5889 and 5890. I received emails acknowledging my requests. But I am not sure how I can download the data and where I can find them. Can you please guide me on where to find the zipped files and how to download them. Thank you
Jens Kattge on 2018-11-13 15:49:40Dear Cibele, the zip file released in the context of your request is quite large, containing all information for 1144327 trait records. It is therefore likely that the size of the zip file is too large for the computer you used to open the file. I would therefore recommend using a computer with 64 BIT operating system. If such a larger computer is not available, you may consider requesting the data via two or three smaller requests. I hope this information helps. Please let us know, if this does not work to solve your problem. With best wishes, Jens
Jens Kattge on 2018-11-13 15:33:38Dear Songhan, you will find the measurement date in the data released from the TRY database under DataID 241. Unfortunately you cannot search the TRY database via the Internet using observation time. I would recommend to request the traits of interest and to select the relevant data from the requested records. I hope this information helps, Jens
Cibele Queiroz on 2018-11-05 23:29:24Dear Try team, Thank you for making my request number 5004 available for download. However, it seems like there is a problem with the zip file as I cannot open it in any way. Could you please check what might be wrong? thank you so much! Cibele
songhan wang on 2018-11-05 12:46:37Dear TRY team, I want to use some long-term observations of leaf traits (e.g., leaf N and P). But I cant find the observation time in this database. And another question is, can we search the database using observation time? Such as, filtering the data from 1980-2015? Is there any continuous observations that I can search or use? Many thanks,Songhan
Jens Kattge on 2018-09-20 15:38:59Dear Cibele, thank you very much for the positive feedback and please accept our apologies for the delay with respect to data release. Everything is OK with your request, but unfortunately Gerhard and I (who are working on the TRY database) were on holidays at the same time and data release has been delayed. We had announced this on the TRY homepage, but not very obvious. Now we are working on a backlog of about 60 requests. Please give us a few more days and you will receive the data. Many thanks again, Jens
Cibele Queiroz on 2018-09-20 15:06:05Dear Try team, first of all thank you so much for putting available so much valuable information. We have now in different projects used try data and two of those papers are now getting ready for submission (will report the publications back once those are accepted). This would hardly be possible some years ago before the existence of this database! I did a recent request with the number 5004 for a new paper that needs to take some speed more than two weeks ago, and I am wondering if there is any problem since the data hasnt been released yet and I only asked for public available information. Could you please get back to me on this and let me know if you need anything else from me or if there is any reason why the request hasnt been approved so far? Thank you very much, Cibele
Gerhard Boenisch on 2018-08-09 08:48:22Dear 鑫 代 - Request 4870 includes the restricted data. At the time you submitted this request you received an email explaining how to proceed after the 14 days the custodians have to review it. I am therefore wondering why you are waiting for an email from TRY. We however send reminder emails to all request PIs every Tuesday for pending requests older than 2 weeks. Request 4871 is on hold, that means you have not asked for the data yet. Once a month we remind request PIs of such requests.
鑫 代 on 2018-08-09 04:48:16Dear TRY team,This is the case. It has been 15 days since I applied for the number 4870. I still havent received the email and I was told whether I passed the application, but I received the email number 4871. I am not ready to apply for 4871. I will take it. cancel. Can you tell me if the number 4870 has passed the request? I urgently need an email reply with the number 4780. Thank you!
Gerhard Boenisch on 2018-07-19 09:13:28Dear Ignacio - It usually means the custodian has not replied yet. Although a decline is possible, this rarely happens. We do not distinguish between the two to avoid bad feelings. Anyway, you should feel free to contact these custodians. This is why we provide the email addresses.
Ignacio Sevillano on 2018-07-18 13:34:36Dear TRY team, I have requested data from try and I am able to start data release. I am just wondering if when in the permission Column says "No", that means that it not possible to have access to these trait or just that the data custodians have not replied yet. Thank you.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2018-06-25 09:47:37Dear Sarah - providing more information about the traits in the Data Explorer is more difficult unfortunately. Obviously, we had started providing trait definitions together with Top-Thesaurus, but there currently is no funding to continue the project.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2018-06-21 15:26:41Dear Sarah - Thanks for the suggestion. I have added the TraitID to the output table.
Sarah Dalrymple on 2018-06-21 12:09:20Sorry, I also forgot to add that it would be really useful to have a list of trait units or categories (as appropriate) when you are exploring the data. For example, it would be interesting to know whether Seed (seedbank) longevity was a continuous variable (given in days perhaps) or a categorical variable such as transient or persistent. Also, an explanation of the traits would help to define whether this was longevity in an ex situ seed bank facility or it referred to the soil seed bank. Thanks! Sarah
Sarah Dalrymple on 2018-06-21 11:45:41Dear TRY team, Thank you for this amazing resource. I am a relatively new user and would like to request data for a given set of species which I have already defined in the data explorer. The data explorer returned a spreadsheet with the requested species and all available traits. Then, when I went to request these data, it asks for the traits by ID which the data explorer output does not provide. It would help the data request process enormously if the output of the data explorer gave the trait ID as well as the trait by name. I can find these through the MATCH function in excel but it would be much simpler if they were generated in the data explorer. If there is a simpler way to do this, please let me know. Thanks again for your excellent work, Sarah
Jens Kattge on 2018-05-09 09:56:15Dear Mark, please accept my apologies for the slow response. According to our our documentation, you did not request trait data from TRY, but browsed the TRY Data Explorer for information about the traits. In this case the numbers indicate the numbers of records in TRY for a given trait and a given species. To request trait records from the TRY database, please go to: https://www.try-db.org/TryWeb/Prop0.php. We are sorry for the misunderstanding and added information to the webpages of the TRY Data Explorer, indicating they provide only information about the trait records in TRY, not the trait records themselves. We hope this will help to avoid this kind of misunderstandings in the future. With best wishes, Jens
Mark Thomas on 2018-04-24 13:44:58Dear TRY, sorry, another question I thought of. If when I download a list of trait data for my species and it says 0 rather than another number, do I take it that it means zero or does it mean that nothing has been recorded for that species in particular? An example would be Leaf nitrogen (N) content per leaf dry mass, I have a few zeros but I wanted to know if that meant the weight was zero (as in none) or whether there isnt any data for that species. Many thanks, Mark
Mark Thomas on 2018-04-24 13:36:56Dear TRY, thank you for the amazing work you do. I have downloaded trait data for my species list but have no way of understanding what the values mean. For instance, I have Photosynthesis pathway and it says definition under construction so I am not sure how to interpret the numbers. This is the same for the other traits I have. Is there some way to find out please? Mark
Gerhard Boenisch on 2018-04-23 09:34:30Dear Diego - first of all Rio is in the southern hemisphere and in the west, so the latitude and longitude must be negative. Second, you must always enter a range (maximum ranges are described on the page). All the traits in TRY are described in the Data Explorer.
Diego Guarin on 2018-04-20 19:11:48Good day members of TRYNET I´m try to look at Data Explorer then Information By Region, and put the coordinates of the region in his case Rio de Janeiro which is Lat 22 and Long 40 but it says that the ranges of lat and long are too big if anybody can help me with that I really appreciate it. and also I´m looking for plants traits that may indicate drought conditions in neotropical regions as the Mata Atlantica in Brazil.if somebody has information free feel to contact me Diego Guarin diaglucif@gmail.com M.Sc Student Nat. Rec. Management ITT Koeln.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2018-03-27 11:34:15Dear Yoni, you are required to talk to the custodians about publication involvement, if they wish. Citation of each original paper is required too. This can be done in an appendix, if restrictions of the journal leave no other option. If your request includes the restricted data, you can choose which datasets you want included in the output. Just be aware, there is only one data output per request. You are however welcome to submit as many requests as you want. You can use the Data Explorer to find out what traits and species from which datasets suit your project, before submitting requests. I hope this answers your questions. Gerhard
Yoni Gavish on 2018-03-27 11:19:34Dear Jens Kattge/Gerhard Boenisch, Thanks for compiling and managing the TRY database! I have requested 109 traits for 236 tree species from 148 datasets. I am wondering if you could clarify some points regarding the usage of the TRY database when working with a large number of datasets. 1. From the 148 datasets, 34 requested to be involved in the publication. Does that mean all of them should be co-authors in any paper? thats a lot of co-authors especially when the traits are a supporting analysis in the general workflow. 2. The guidelines state I should cite each of the 148 dataset separately in the method section, and some custodians actually ask for multiple citations. It would be impossible to cite all the datasets, especially with papers becoming shorter and journals limiting the total citations to about 60. what should I do? 3. Is it possible to first download a subset of the datasets that does not request publication involvement, and then review the other datasets if needed? 4. Eventually, I need traits that covers as many of the species in my species list. Ive submitted a big list of traits and species in my request, hoping to select the subset of traits that cover many species. Is there a way to generate a trait by species matrix at this stage with 1 and 0 (not the actual trait values)? when clicking on the measurement/trait/species table I get the full datasets and not the subset of traits/species I asked for. Also, each of the measurement/trait/species table is not downloadable and need to be copy-pasted into excel for each dataset separately. This would take considerable time to process. How would you suggest reviewing the datasets if the aim is to have as large as possible fill of a species by trait matrix? Sorry for the long question... Best regards, Yoni Gavish
Gerhard Boenisch on 2018-03-13 08:32:04Dear Yolanda - Republication means it is allowed to make the data of the request used in a publication publicly available, if the journal requires it
Yolanda Chirango on 2018-03-12 15:07:47Hi, Im in the process of selecting datasets for data release and one of the categories is Data Republication. What does that mean?
Gerhard Boenisch on 2017-11-02 11:27:19Dear Marina You are right. To receive all traits available for a list of species, you have to create the comma separated list of all trait IDs.
Gerhard Boenisch on 2017-11-02 11:22:05Dear Nicola There is no way to ask for data from the TRY database by region. The reason is only a fraction of the data is geo-referenced and you would miss possible useful data. The way to get the data is to ask for all traits and species you possibly need for your analysis. You will then receive the geo-references as part of the auxiliary data with the traits.
Nicola Kuhn on 2017-10-25 18:12:56Dear Jens Kattge/Gerhard Boenisch, I am undertaking PhD work at the University of Oxford. I am looking for all available geo-located trait data for a particular region, as opposed to a particular list of traits or species. The current methods of extracting the data only allow me to extract in the latter way. Is there anyway I can extract by region? Many thanks in advance for your time, Nicola Kühn
Marina Cock on 2017-09-05 22:16:31Dear TRY memmbers, Is there any way to require data of all traits available for a list of species? It seems that the systems require a list of traits. Another way to do it would be to require all the traits but I think that would end in a very long list. Thanks.
Jens Kattge on 2017-08-08 16:57:30Dear Farnoush, please take a look at sPlot - the global vegetation database, which matches exactly to your requirements: https://www.idiv.de/?id=176&L=0 To get access to this database please contact: Dr. Borja Jiménez-Alfaro borja.jimenez-alfaro@botanik.uni-halle.de With best wishes, Jens
Farnoush Farahpour on 2017-08-08 16:36:11Dear TRY members, I am a bioinformatic scientist and for a project I am looking for some datasets with basically few properties: 1- consist of many (more than 50) different samples (different space- and time points), 2- have complete list of species abundances and 3- have information about the trait of species or functional diversity of the samples. Unfortunately I can find none of these information in description of TRY datasets. If I request to get the data to figure out if it fulfills my criteria or not, it takes time to have access to them. Do you have any suggestion which can help me to find out which dataset I should I?
Gerhard Boenisch on 2016-09-01 07:16:40Dear Waleed - All plant species the database contains are listed in the Data Explorer (https://www.try-db.org/de/de.php - Information by Species).


Disclaimer Page calls: 50301 Gerhard Boenisch, Jens Kattge, created 2011-11-01, modified 2015-11-11