Who are we?
SPI-Birds, or the Studies of Populations of Individuals – Birds, is a grassroots initiative connecting those working on populations of individually-marked breeding birds. SPI-Birds offers a number of free-to-use services for scientific collaboration via our Network, and data management and analysis via our Repository and Pipelines.
The SPI-Birds Network is a network of people studying and collecting data on individually-marked breeding birds. The Network offers expert advice on:
- how to start with studying and monitoring a new population (e.g., we can advice on the best approach to field set-up and data management)
- joining existing collaborative projects or starting new projects based on the data hosted in the SPI-Birds Repository. We especially encourage students and young researchers to get in touch
The SPI-Birds Repository is a data hub of data on individually-marked birds. The Repository:
- registers studies of populations of individually-marked breeding birds and the people involved in these studies
- hosts breeding and individual data from over 200 breeding populations of individually-marked birds
- acts as a central contact point for accessing the data
- conducts quality checks on the data to correct for any mistakes in the datasets, and to warn users about potential issues when using the data
The SPI-Birds Pipelines are code-based pipelines that standardise a local data format (e.g., as stored by a researcher or research group) into the SPI-Birds standard format (see here).
Why do we do this?
- Archive data to prevent data loss.
- Make it easier for users to identify studies that might be of interest for their project.
- Reduce the time involved in formatting data.
- Provide a community standard of data formatting and vocabulary that can be followed by anybody establishing a new field study.
- Increase the quality and integrity of data.
Become a member or use the data
Become a data-contributing member
Do you collect data on individually-marked breeding birds, and are you interested in contributing to our initiative? Join the SPI-Birds Network and Database as a contributing partner. We welcome both researchers and members of the general public who run a field study of individually-marked breeding birds. Please reach out to us via spibirds@nioo.knaw.nl or fill in the online metadata form.
Become a non-data-contributing member
Are you interested in the philosophy and future plans of SPI-Birds, but do you not coordinate an individual-based field study yourself? Join our SPI-Birds Network Google Group to regularly receive news and updates. Please reach out to us via spibirds@nioo.knaw.nl if you want to join this group.
Become a data user
Anyone can use the database to search for studies of interest, and to request the access to the data. Please go to 'Find a study' and explore.