The long-term individual-based time series (LITS) project ran at Imperial College and the Center for Population Biology (CPB) at Silwood Park in ~2005-2006. It was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) with a grant to Tim Clutton-Brock, Charles Godfray and Tim Coulson.

The broad aim of the project was to catalogue UK-based long-term population biology time series projects. We collected metadata on these projects including the species, geolocation, data owner(s), time frame, type of data collected and so on. An initial important aim was to digitise data sets deemed to be at risk of loss, for example due to the data owners retiring and/or portions of the data being stored in paper records.

The project was described in Jones et al. (2008).

This Github repository holds some of the data that emerged from the project.

We digitised three data sets. The first is a 15-year dataset of populations of kestrels (Falco tinnunculus) in England and Scotland (Village 1990). The study includes information on the breeding success, diet, sightings, distribution and morphometrics of approximately 1000 marked birds. The second dataset is on a population of rook (Corvus frugilegus) (Patterson, Dunnet & Goodbody 1988) monitored for 11 years. This dataset holds information on sightings, breeding success, morphometrics, and mortality of almost 7000 birds. The last dataset is a 28-year study of a population of sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) (Newton & Rothery 1997). The databases were constructed by Ian Stevenson (Sunadal Data Solutions) with input from Owen Jones and the data owners.

• Jones, O. R., Clutton-Brock, T., Coulson, T., & Godfray, H. C. J. (2008). A web resource for the UK's long-term individual-based time-series (LITS) data. Journal of Animal Ecology, 77(3), 612-615. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2008.01382.x
• Newton, I. & Rothery, P. (1997) Senescence and reproductive value in Sparrowhawks. Ecology, 78, 1000–1008.
• Patterson, I.J., Dunnet, G.M. & Goodbody, S.R. (1988) Body weight and juvenile mortality in rooks Corvus frugilegus. Journal of Animal Ecology, 57, 1041–1052.
• Village, A. (1990) The Kestrel, 1st edn. T & AD Poyser Ltd, London.