Logo SeagrassTraitDB
SeagrassTraitDB is a global data base of curated seagrass traits. It integrates world-wide seagrass trait data in one consistent format. SeagrassTraitDB is based on data sets contributed by seagrass scientists. Plant traits are any morphological, anatomical, biochemical, physiological or phenological feature measurable at the individual level, from the cell to the whole organism. The individual is considered to lie at the heart of the ecological and evolutionary processes as it is at its level that acclimation and adaptation occur. The responses of individuals determine those of populations and communities and thus the dynamics and functioning of ecosystems.

The aim of SeagrassTraitDB is to integrate and make available the global empirical data basis of seagrass traits. We expect that this will contribute to understand and predict how the expression of the functional diversity of seagrass individuals varies along environmental gradients and how it translates into the higher levels of population and community structure, and of ecosystem functioning.

All activities of SeagrassTraitDB are directed by the Steering Committee, consisting of scientists Carmen B. de los Santos and Rui Santos. The Steering Committee provides guidance for the development of the SeagrassTraitDB initiative.

The host, development, maintenance, and curation of SeagrassTraitDB is under the responsibility of Cymon Cox, João Machado, Gianluca De Moro, Carmen B. de los Santos and Rui Santos, from the Centre of Marine Sciences of Algarve.

SeagrassTraitDB has the support of BioData.pt, the Portuguese distributed infrastructure for biological data and the Portuguese ELIXIR node.


Intellectual Property Guidelines
  • 1. Data contribution

    An individual that directly contributes data to SeagrassTraitDB is called a patron. A patron may be a person who collected or aggregated the original data or may act as a representative of all individual contributors in a collective dataset or as a representative of an organization that collected or aggregated the data.

    The patron must indicate if the contributed data is public or of restricted access. In the latter case, the patron will be contacted each time her/his data is requested. Patrons may request involvement in publications that are using these data. Intellectual property rights in the data remain with the data patron. It will be the patron’s responsibility to solve intellectual property rights and authorship rules within the group of contributors. SeagrassTraitDB will not take responsibility for data mishandling on the part of the patrons.


  • 2. Data requests

    Individuals or groups of individuals that would like to use SeagrassTraitDB data need to submit a request via the SeagrassTraitDB website (http://seagrasses.ccmar.ualg.pt) with a list of selected traits and species. They are encouraged to provide a title and a brief description of their project that should allow patrons to understand the questions to be addressed. All patrons whose data are involved in the request will be informed by SeagrassTraitDB curators. The requested data will become available as soon as possible after patrons’ agreement. When applied, patrons should be involved at early stages of manuscripts preparation, so that they may contribute with valid suggestions.

    Public data will be free to download directly by SeagrassTraitDB users.

    Title, short information about the request, names of the PI and Co‐PIs and names of requested traits and species may be published on the SeagrassTraitDB website.


  • 3. Requirements for products produced with data received via SeagrassTraitDB

    Any product that involves data received via SeagrassTraitDB needs to cite the references of the public datasets as contributed to SeagrassTraitDB and the standard reference of SeagrassTraitDB. In the context of peer‐reviewed publications these citations should be accountable by indexing services like Google Scholar or the Science Citation Index (SCI). The standard reference of the SeagrassTraitDB is currently: de los Santos, C.B., Machado, J., De Moro, G., Cox, C., Santos, R. (2022). SeagrassTraitDB - global data base of seagrass traits. http://seagrasses.ccmar.ualg.pt [date of access].

  • 4. Other issues

    Any issues not contemplated in these guidelines will be considered by the Steering Committee of SeagrassTraitDB.
Data Standardization


  • Investigation: Investigations are research programmes with defined aims. They can exist at various scales (for example, a research project, a doctoral thesis, a peer-reviewed publication, or a single experiment or study).


  • Study: A study comprises a series of trait measurements (one or more) at a specific location. An investigation may contain one or more studies.


  • Trait list: Trait names and plant entities are standardized according to the Plant Trait Ontology (TO) and Plant Ontology (PO), when possible. The Trait List contains: the Trait ID and Trait Name in the SeagrassTraitDB, the scale (i.e., units) and format (float, int, enum, bool, or varchar) for the reported values, the corresponding Trait ID and Trait Name in the TO, and the corresponding Trait ID and Trait Name in the TRY database. Traits may be point observations (single measurement in an individual) or averages (average for measurements in multiple individuals). In this case, it is mandatory to report the standard deviation and the number of replicates. Numerical trait values must be standardized to the appropriate units (which are given in the "Trait List" ). To include a new trait, patrons must contact curators, providing the trait name, scale, and precise definition for consideration. In the present version, 206 traits are listed.


  • Species list: Taxonomic names of seagrasses are resolved using three authoritative species lists: World Register of Marine Species, AlgaBase, and NCBI Taxonomy Database. In the present version, 86 species are listed.