He collected and ordered various avian traits such as diets, habitats, and conservation status for all tropical forest understory bug-eating bird species. The result is BIRDBASE, “a comprehensive global dataset documenting ecological and life history traits for 11,589 bird species across 254 families. BIRDBASE includes all the 11,589 bird species recognized by the world’s four major bird lists (yes, there’s more than one list and they don’t agree on everything). Despite enduring data gaps, researchers can use BIRDBASE to investigate topics such as trait-environment relationships across bird species, traits linked to extinction risk or population decline, and global patterns of bird traits and diversity. PicasaOne of the interesting things discovered using BIRDBASE is that 54 percent of bird species are bug-eating, and many of them are under pressure.