science

Reptile Database

Reptile Database is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Reptile Database rather than just read about it. In short: The Reptile Database is a scientific database that collects taxonomic information on all living reptile species (i.e. no fossil species such as dinosaurs). The database focuses on species (as opposed to higher ranks such as families) and has entries for all currently recognized ~14,000 species and their subspecies, although there is usually a lag time of up to a few months before newly described species become avail…

Key takeaways

Reptile Database belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Reptile Database to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Reptile Database from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Reptile Database is a scientific database that collects taxonomic information on all living reptile species (i.e. no fossil species such as dinosaurs). The database focuses on species (as opposed to higher ranks such as families) and has entries for all currently recognized ~14,000 species and their subspecies, although there is usually a lag time of up to a few months before newly described species become available online. The database collects scientific and common names, synonyms, literature references, distribution information, type information, etymology, and other taxonomically relevant information.

History The database was founded in 1995 as EMBL Reptile Database when the founder, Peter Uetz, was a graduate student at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. Thure Etzold had developed the first web interface for the EMBL DNA sequence database which was also used as interface for the Reptile Database. In 2006, the database moved to The Institute of Genomic Research (TIGR) and briefly operated as TIGR Reptile Database until TIGR was merged into the J Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) where Uetz was an associate professor until 2010. Since 2010, the database has been maintained on servers in the Czech Republic under the supervision of Peter Uetz and Jirí Hošek, a Czech programmer. The database celebrated its 25th anniversary together with AmphibiaWeb which had its 20th anniversary in 2021.

Content

As of August 2024, the Reptile Database lists about 12,200 species (including another ~2,200 subspecies) in about 1250 genera (see figure), and has more than 60,000 literature references and about 22,000 photos. The database has constantly grown since its inception with an average of 100 to 200 new species described per year over the preceding decade. Recently, the database also added a more or less complete list of primary type specimens.

Relationship to other databases The Reptile Database has been a member of the Species 2000 project that has produced the Catalogue of Life (CoL), a meta-database of more than 150 species databases that catalog all living species on the planet. The CoL provides taxonomic information to the Encyclopedia of Life (EoL). The Reptile Database also collaborates with the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), the citizen science project iNaturalist, and has links to the IUCN Redlist database. The NCBI taxonomy database links out to the Reptile Database.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Reptile Database

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Reptile Database claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Reptile Database before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Reptile Database ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Reptile Database

In research: Reptile Database appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Reptile Database in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Reptile Database is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Biodiversity databases, Herpetology, Online taxonomy databases, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Reptile Database outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Reptile Database in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Reptile Database means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Reptile Database out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Reptile Database in simple terms?

Why does Reptile Database matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Reptile Database?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Reptile Database.