← Avian Data Explorer
Behavioral Trait-Syndrome Network
Load the data to grow the network — every trait becomes a node, and every edge shows how often two traits show up in the same species.
| Species | Order |
|---|
Load the data to grow the network — every trait becomes a node, and every edge shows how often two traits show up in the same species.
| Species | Order |
|---|
Every node is a behavior — a social style, a mating system, a nest type, or a movement pattern. Every edge connects two behaviors that show up together in the same species more than expected — the closer two nodes cluster, the more they travel as a package. Node size is the number of species with that trait; edge thickness is the strength of the association.
Drag a node to explore its neighborhood — it snaps back into the simulation when you let go. Double-click a node to pin it in place while you compare others. Hover a node or edge for details, or click one to list its supporting species below (click a species to open its full profile).
Metric switches how "association" is measured: Jaccard is the share of species with either trait that have both — good for finding common pairings. Lift is how much more often two traits co-occur than pure chance would predict — better at surfacing rare, surprising pairings (a small node like Lekking can still light up a high-lift edge even though it only covers a handful of species). Every candidate pair is first required to share at least 5 species (3 within a single Order) before either metric is computed, so a co-occurrence of one or two species can never appear as an edge just because the Min. slider is turned all the way down.
Group by Order recomputes every association within just that taxonomic group, so you can check whether a syndrome (e.g. the social/colonial cluster) holds dataset-wide or is really a Passeriformes thing. Only Orders with enough species to support the math are listed; smaller Orders would show almost no edges even at their loosest setting.
The species data on this page comes from BIRDBASE, a peer-reviewed global dataset of avian biogeography, conservation, ecology, and life-history traits — 78 traits for 11,589 species across 254 families, synthesized from 367 published sources spanning 1957–2025.
Şekercioğlu, Ç.H., Kittelberger, K.D., Mota, F.M.M. et al. BIRDBASE: A Global Dataset of Avian Biogeography, Conservation, Ecology and Life History Traits. Scientific Data (2025).
This page is a downstream retelling of that dataset, not a replacement for the source — see the full paper on nature.com for methodology, sources, and citation details.
0 = behavior not described for the species. A species can carry more than one flag.
This page treats any of 1/2/3 as a single "Cooperative breeding" node.
A species can build more than one nest type. Sphere and Saucer are merged into one node here since each covers fewer than 10 species on its own.
1 = species undertakes that type of movement.