• Data Descriptor

• Open access

• Published: 03 February 2026

• Vincent Laderriere ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1023-48901,

• Philippe Usseglio-Polatera1,

• Florence Maunoury-Danger1 &

• …

• Aurélie Cébron2

Scientific Data , Article number: (2026) Cite this article

We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

Abstract

There is still a need for a better understanding of how abiotic/biotic factors affect the functional structure and composition of biological assemblages, given that living organisms are in constant interaction with their environment and with each other. Here, we present a comprehensive dataset of 31 functional traits of bacteria using information from BacDive, a bacterial diversity meta-database, as well as from the rrnDB and genomesizeR datasets. This updated version of the BactoTraits dataset, in addition to now offering more traits for more strains (97,721 strains with at least one trait described), makes R scripts available to the scientific community. These traits include physiological characteristics, metabolic processes, genome properties and biotope preferences. They could be inferred to the whole bacterial community thanks to taxonomic affiliation obtained from traditional high throughput 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing methods. This taxonomic affiliation is based on the regularly updated SILVA database and thus allows to study combinations of weighted mean trait profiles of bacterial communities at different taxonomic levels. BactoTraits can be used, for example, to improve predictions of ecological responses to natural/anthropogenic pressures and to support biomonitoring, management and conservation strategies. The R scripts, as well as the dataset encoded in BactoTraits, are available at: https://doi.org/10.24396/ORDAR-182.

Data availability

The encoded BactoTraits28 dataset is available at: https://doi.org/10.24396/ORDAR-182. The database was updated on January 28, 2026, and is available at three taxonomic levels: (1) strain level (BACTOTRAITS_database_2026-01-28; each row represents a specific BacDive ID), (2) species level (BACTOTRAITS_database_2026-01-28_SPECIESLVL; each row describes a specific species), (3) and finally at the genus level (BACTOTRAITS_database_2026-01-28_GENUSLVL; each row refers to a specific genus). Note that the strain-level version (i.e., BACTOTRAITS_database_2026-01-28) is the most detailed and includes all information relating to the sequence accession number and the corresponding NCBI tax ID (using the separator “|” in case of multiple match). In these three datasets, each column corresponds to a specific trait information. All these traits are divided into as many columns as there are modalities, where the column name specifies both the trait name and the modality name, separated by an underscore (e.g., “gram_stain_positive” or “gram_stain_negative”).

Code availability

Analyses and figures were produced using the R software34 (R-4.5.2) including the following packages: BacDive (0.8.0), tydiverse (2.0.0), rrapply (1.2.8), stringr (1.6.0), purrr (1.2.0), readr (2.1.6), progress (1.2.3), conflicted (1.2.0) and genomesizeR (1.0.0.0002). All these libraries and their respective dependencies are provided in the “LIBRARY” folder to ensure future compatibility. The R project and associated scripts, are available at: https://doi.org/10.24396/ORDAR-182.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support of the present study has come from the APR IMPACTS 2020 of the projet DiagnoTraits (2172D0218-A). This work was also supported by the French National program EC2CO (Ecosphère Continentale et Côtière) with the project DiagnoBactO (AT MICROBIOME 2024).

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Authors and Affiliations

Université de Lorraine, CNRS, LIEC, F-57000, Metz, France

Vincent Laderriere, Philippe Usseglio-Polatera & Florence Maunoury-Danger 1.

Université de Lorraine, CNRS, LIEC, F-54000, Nancy, France

Aurélie Cébron

Authors

1. Vincent Laderriere
2. Philippe Usseglio-Polatera
3. Florence Maunoury-Danger
4. Aurélie Cébron

Contributions

A.C., P.U.P. and F.M.D. developed the idea and data collection framework. V.L. compiled most of the data and structured the dataset following the previous work of A.C., P.U.P. and F.M.D. All the authors contributed to the addition and verification of the information included in the dataset. V.L. wrote the R scripts, first draft of the manuscript and designed figures. All the authors have contributed to its proofreading.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aurélie Cébron.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Laderriere, V., Usseglio-Polatera, P., Maunoury-Danger, F. et al. BactoTraits: a trait database for exploring functional diversity of bacterial communities. Sci Data (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06652-2

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Received: 15 May 2025

Accepted: 19 January 2026

Published: 03 February 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-06652-2