We have a new data paper out in Ecology focusing on tropical plant ecophysiology.

The paper presents leaf venation networks for several hundred southeast Asian tree species. The dataset includes both raw images (approximately 50-70 megapixels per image) as well as hand-tracings of large regions of each of these images. A few examples are shown above.

The data arise from fieldwork from the BALI traits campaign in Malaysia a few years back, led by Dr. Sabine Both, and involving a large team of Malaysian and international collaborators.

All of the leaves in this study were sampled from the upper canopy of trees in natural forests, at great effort.

The samples were then pressed and dried and sent to the University of Oxford, where our team prepared the imagery and tracings.

The data are exciting because they provide new descriptive understandings of botanical diversity in this part of the world. They also provide a uniquely large dataset for machine learning – the hand tracings can be leveraged to help computers learn how to ‘see’ transportation networks in biological systems. Our teams are in the process of developing these tools, and also of analyzing these images to understand their ecological and evolutionary significance as part of a prior NERC award and a current NSF award. But in the meantime we felt it was important to release the imagery as a community resource. Please have a look and consider using them in your own work!