New to the game so this is awesome! Any idea if there is a place that lists how much space their enclosures need to be? I come from the Plant Zoo world where they have a zoopedia listing all the requirements for the animals.
Not really. It really just scales with how many are in there and what their requirements are. You basically just have to watch the comfort meters as you add more dinos into the enclosure until you reach a limit on something and can't add more without losing too much of something else. I usually start with just building an enclosure the size of the viewing gallery's range. As long as you leave room it's easy to extend enclosures later by adding a viewing platform either on the fence or in front if you need to. As long as you only need 1 or 2 food sources they don't need much space.
The way the game limits space is that as you increase population of a species all of their environmental needs increase. Also food types and forest/open space compete with each other within an enclosure. Increasing the population of one species does not affect the environmental needs of the others - even if they share a food source.
So even though Nodosaurus, Nasutoceratops, and Struthiomimus all eat the same ground leaf and drink the same water they only compete with their own kind. Adding more Nodos will only increase the ground leaf and water requirement for the Nodos. Nasutos have a bigger forest requirement than ground leaf - so you'll reach the limit when adding more ground leaf for Nodos would take away forest that Nasutos need, or vice versa. Forest also counts as open space for Nodos so that's basically not a requirement. Because Nasutos and Struthies are neutral instead of friendly you also don't want to add too many of one to make the other's cohabitation meter go into the red. You can fit a lot though - probably until you get 10+ you don't even need to worry about it. Just don't add a 4th species in this example. If all species are on the "likes" list of all other species there is no cohabitation meter.
Dracorex, Maiasaura and Kentrosaurus is the other extreme. That enclosure would need ground leaf, ground nut, ground fruit and ground fiber - as well as open space/forest. That enclosure would have to be much bigger compared to one with Muttabura, Amarga and Kentro as they all only eat ground fiber.
Herbivores are limited more by food types/forest/cohabitation requirements rather than enclosure space - because the food is what takes up space. Carnivores are limited by enclosure space not food as the amount of live feeders in an enclosure is not a limitation. For them (and big Sauropods) you wouldn't be able to use a 1 viewing gallery sized enclosure. Probably one more like 2x the size at least for any Sauropods. Big carnivores it depends on their rating. 3 Ceratos, or 2 Carnos might barely fit in a gallery sized enclosure but if you want 8 Ceratos, or 5 Carnos you'll need something about 25-50% bigger And 2 Giganotosaurus or T-Rex will need one at least double that size.
After adding more of a species you can click on one and go to edit environment from their comfort tab. Even if the game is paused you can see the effects on their comfort in real-time as you add and remove things. When you edit this way it also puts an little icon on whatever is needed for that dino. If you just released the first batch of a species they need time to expand territory for this to work though. Just make sure that by making their comfort rating 100% you didn't lower another species'.
Also, if your alpha herbivores have the small appetite trait and your alpha carnivores have the humble trait you can fit 30% more in. Humble trait for large Sauropods is nice too otherwise they will need a ton of space for forest. There are a few food sources that provide multiple food types as well.
You can really pack them in if you want to. Make sure you research medium paths and medium amenities as soon as you can and replace the old ones. Same with large amenities. The limit is usually amenity capacity or crowding rather than enclosure size.
