Santangeli et al. DATA & SCRIPTS - What drives our aesthetic attraction to birds?
The dataset file (CSV) includes all the variables used in the study by Santangeli et al. titled What drives our aesthetic attraction to birds published in The dataset file (CSV) includes all the variables used in the study by Santangeli et al. titled What drives our aesthetic attraction to birds? published in 2023 in NPJ Biodiversity (DOI : 10.1038/s44185-023-00026-2).
The dataset (file named: "monsterALL2_2_2023.csv") is structured so as to have one or two rows per species, depending if the species is sex dichromatic or not. This structure is dictated and adjusted by the availablility of the species by sex aesthetic attractiveness score.
Sex monochromatic species have only one attractiveness score, and appear as only one row in the database. Sex dichromatic species may have up to two available attractiveness scores, one for eaither sex (male or female), and therefore may have up to two rows in the database, if attractiveness for both sexes is available.
In terms of the variables, the dataset includes taxonomy related variables, such as the species latin name, family and order level information, as well as sex, with three classes: male, female or average (for the monochromatic species).
Attractiveness is given with two variables, including the average attractiveness score by species and sex, and the standard deviation associated to that score as a measure of uncertainty.
These are followed by a selection of AVONET (https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/AVONET_morphological_ecological_and_geographical_data_for_all_birds_Tobias_et_al_2021_Ecology_Letters_/16586228/1) bird traits, such as morphometric measurements (e.g. beak and tarsus length), as well as data on the habitat, migration ecology and trophic level of each species.
Then the color related variables are presented, including the plain colors (such as blue and green) separately for their dark and light version (e.g. blueD and blueL, respectively), as well as other variables representing color diversity (n.loci), color elaboration (elaboration), sex dichromatism score. Other variables following are the length of the crest (crest), IUCN red list category and population trend, as well as biogeographical variables related to the species range (e.g. range size). The last column (BirdTREE) represents the bird species taxonomy matching the BirdTREE taxonomy (available at: https://birdtree.org/).
The script file (Santangeli et al Attractivness_final_script) includes all the documented steps to reproduce the analyses, which also require custom made functions available in the file "Functions".
