IguanaNaut / Mortality & Morbidity Database
The Mortality & Morbidity Database
11,432 anonymized incident logs across 2,100+ verified keepers — the only public, opt-in mortality & morbidity dataset purpose-built for captive reptiles and amphibians.
Cite as: IguanaNaut Mortality & Morbidity Database (2026) — Anonymized incident corpus, v.11.0. Editors: IguanaNaut Media, LLC, Austin, TX. Methodology per Joint Protocols for Captive Herpetological Record-Keeping, 2024.
§ 01 · Methodology
How a case enters the dataset — and what gets stripped on the way in.
Every entry is contributed under explicit opt-in, classified by source tier, and reduced to clinical signals before publication. What survives is the signal; what leaves is the keeper.
Intake
A contributor — a verified keeper, an AZA-affiliated institution, or a DVM contributor — files a structured incident report through the IguanaNaut contribution portal. Required fields include taxon, husbandry parameters at the time of incident, presenting signs, clinical outcome, and — where available — necropsy findings.
Reports are accepted in three formats: an online structured form, a faxed veterinary worksheet, or a transcription from a contributing clinician. No paper original is retained.
Anonymization
Once the report is received, identifiers are stripped in two passes. The first pass removes names, addresses, breeder tags, microchip numbers, and any free-text field that could re-identify the keeper or the household. The second pass scrubs indirect identifiers — enclosure photographs are cropped to remove room geometry, and locality metadata is generalized to the nearest bioregion.
Source-tier classification
Every published case carries one of three source tiers, marked by a 3px left-edge bar in the dataset UI:
- Peer-reviewed (PR). Originates from a published herpetological medicine paper, a clinical case report from a contributing DVM, or an institutional morbidity round. Linked at the record level to its citation.
- Verified-keeper log (VK). Submitted by a keeper whose identity has been verified by two existing contributors and whose husbandry is consistent over at least 12 months of prior records.
- Editorial summary (ES). Aggregated from public breeder logs, forum records, or veterinary social-media posts; included only when no peer-reviewed or verified-keeper source exists for the signal.
Opt-in ethics
No incident is ever logged without the contributing keeper's explicit, dated consent for inclusion in the public dataset. Consent can be revoked at any time, and the corresponding record is permanently removed within seven days. Veterinary contributors retain co-authorship rights on any aggregate analysis that draws more than 25 cases from their submissions.
§ 02 · Scale
The shape of the corpus, at a glance.
11,432
Anonymized incident logs across 178 taxa
2,100+
Verified keepers contributing from 92 countries
60+
Exotics veterinary practices actively querying
10 yrs
Continuous logging since the dataset's founding in 2014
Aggregate figures current as of Vol. 11 · Issue 17. The dataset is updated weekly; case counts here are not promotional — they are the corpus a clinician is requesting access to.
§ 03 · Contributor tiers
Four roles, four scopes of access.
Every contributor to the M&M Database belongs to one of four tiers. Each tier unlocks a distinct set of permissions, and each carries a distinct attestation standard.
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01
Verified Keepers
Private hobbyists and breeders whose identity has been confirmed by two existing contributors and whose husbandry record spans at least 12 months of consistent submissions. Verified keepers may log incidents, query the full corpus, export their own records, and contribute to peer-keeper review of protocols derived from the dataset.
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02
AZA Institutions
AZA-affiliated zoos and accredited herpetarium collections contributing institutional morbidity and mortality rounds. AZA contributors receive a read/write API key tied to their institution, citation of their rounds in any aggregate publication derived from those rounds, and quarterly summary reports.
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03
DVM Contributors
Licensed veterinarians — exotic specialists and general practitioners with an exotics caseload — who contribute clinical case reports, necropsy findings, and treatment-outcome data. DVM contributors hold co-authorship rights on any aggregate analysis drawing from their submissions and may request embargo on commercially sensitive signal sets for up to 90 days.
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04
Academic Researchers
Faculty, postdocs, and graduate researchers at accredited institutions undertaking peer-reviewed work in herpetological medicine, captive-animal welfare, or comparative physiology. Academic researchers receive bulk-query access, citation guarantees, and an embargo window for accepted-but-unpublished work, in exchange for contributing back any derived aggregate statistics to the public dataset.
§ 04 · Request access
Request veterinary or research API access.
API access is credentialed. Submitting the form below starts a manual review by the editorial team; turnaround is generally five business days.
Your request should include:
- Institutional affiliation (practice, university, AZA member, or independent DVM with verifiable licence number).
- A short statement of intended use — clinic-side reference, peer-reviewed study, or institutional morbidity round.
- Confirmation that no protected locality data, CITES-restricted taxon identifiers, or wild-caught specimen data will be derived or republished from the corpus.
- Agreement to cite the dataset by its canonical form in any publication or presentation arising from access.
Questions before you submit? Write directly to [email protected] · +1 (512) 555-0418.