Accessibility / Report Error

The iNaturalist platform as a source of data to study amphibians in Brazil

Abstract

Based on debilitating recent budget cuts for science, Brazilian researchers had to find alternative ways to continue scientific production. Here we provide a perspective for the use of citizen-science data deposited in the iNaturalist platform as an alternative source of data to support biodiversity research. Observations contributed by volunteers can be analyzed at large spatial and temporal scales and can respond to questions in behavioral and population ecology. We analyzed this potential through the example of Brazilian amphibians, a group that is less studied worldwide than birds. In fact, to our knowledge, only two studies have been published that are based on citizen-science data for Brazilian amphibians. At the time of writing, the iNaturalist platform has over 14,800 research grade observations from Brazil, representing 698 species, a number increasing daily. Compared to other species-rich countries, volunteer-collected datasets from Brazil cover a relatively high taxonomic diversity (61%), providing a plethora of valuable data. Despite this potential, there are large spatial gaps in sampling in Brazil. Here we encourage established and budding herpetologists not only to use the platform to retrieve data, but also to contribute to iNaturalist actively, with new observations, as well as by identifying species in existing records.

Key words
Brazil; budget cuts; community scientists; frogs; knowledge gaps

INTRODUCTION

Biodiversity research conducted exclusively by professional scientists is spatially, temporally, and financially limited (Tulloch et al. 2013TULLOCH AIT ET AL. 2013. Realising the full potential of citizen science monitoring programs. Biol Conserv 165: 128-138.). This often results in restricted data collection, particularly considering the difficulties of conducting long-term and large-scale field-based research projects. On the other hand, in the long term and after an initial investment and ongoing management, crowdsourcing approaches or projects with data collected by a large number of volunteers can result in large sample sizes from extensive areas for a relatively low cost compared to data collected exclusively by professionals (Devictor et al. 2010DEVICTOR V, WHITTAKER RJ & BELTRAME C. 2010. Beyond scarcity: citizen science programmes as useful tools for conservation biogeography. Divers Distrib 16: 354-362., Newman et al. 2011NEWMAN G ET AL. 2011. The art and science of multi-scale citizen science support. Ecol Informs 6(3-4): 217-227.). The definition sensu lato of citizen science is knowledge construction based on the participation of a network of people (Bonney et al. 2009bBONNEY R, COOPER CB, DICKINSON JL, KELLING S, PHILLIPS T, ROSENBERG KV & SHIRK J. 2009b. “Citizen Science: A developing tool for expanding science knowledge and scientific literacy.” BioScience 59(11): 977-984.). Citizen science can be described as a research technique that relies on the public to gather scientific information (Bonney et al. 2009bBONNEY R, COOPER CB, DICKINSON JL, KELLING S, PHILLIPS T, ROSENBERG KV & SHIRK J. 2009b. “Citizen Science: A developing tool for expanding science knowledge and scientific literacy.” BioScience 59(11): 977-984., Kullenberg & Kasperowski 2016KULLENBERG C & KASPEROWSKI D. 2016. What Is Citizen Science? – A Scientometric Meta-Analysis. PLoS ONE 11(1): e0147152.). This approach usually involves a project manager, who is often a scientist, to engage a team of volunteers to collect data (Haklay et al. 2021HAKLAY MM ET AL. 2021. What is citizen science? The challenges of definition. In: The science of citizen science. Vohland K, Land-Zandstra A, Ceccaroni L, Lemmens R, Perelló J, Ponti M, Samson and Wagenknecht K (Eds), p. 13-34.). In some projects, the public also collaborate with project design and analysis (Bonney et al. 2009aBONNEY R ET AL. 2009a. Public Participation in Scientific Research: Defining the Field and Assessing Its Potential for Informal Science Education. A CAISE Inquiry Group Report. Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE).). However, regardless of the degree of public participation, the interaction will benefit both scientists and the general public, since the process creates a large amount of data, while citizens actively participate in knowledge production. For conservation biology and other applied research fields, both benefits are substantial (Gray et al. 2017GRAY S ET AL. 2017. Combining participatory modelling and citizen science to support volunteer conservation action. Biol Conserv 208: 76-86.).

In Brazil, scientific publications based on citizen-collected data mostly focus on birds (Schubert et al. 2019SCHUBERT SC, MANICA LT & GUARALDO AC. 2019. Revealing the potential of a huge citizen-science platform to study bird migration. Emu 119(4): 364-373., Alexandrino et al. 2022ALEXANDRINO ER et al. 2022. Which birds are Brazilians seeing on urban and nonurban feeders? An analysis based on a collective online birding. Ornithology Research 30: 104-117. AmphibiaWeb 2021 <https://amphibiaweb.org> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed 24 Nov 2021., de Souza et al. 2022DE SOUZA E, LIMASANTOS J, ENTIAUSPENETO OM, DOS SANTOS MM, DE MOURA PR & HINGSTZAHER E. 2022. Ophiophagy in Brazilian birds: a contribution from a collaborative platform of citizen science. Ornithology Research 30: 15-24.). Nevertheless, some articles have been published on arthropods (Mesaglio et al. 2021MESAGLIO T ET AL. 2021. First Known Photographs of Living Specimens: the power of iNaturalist for recording rare tropical butterfies. J Insect Conserv 25: 905-911.), marine species (Machado et al. 2021MACHADO AA ET AL. 2021. Participatory monitoring of marine biological invaders: a novel program to include citizen scientists. J Coast Conserv 25: 25.) and primates (Nery et al. 2021NERY MS ET AL. 2021. Citizen Science for Monitoring Primates in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: Preliminary Results from a Critical Conservation Tool. Primate Conserv 35: 103-115.). While amphibians are popular subjects of citizen science in other countries (e.g., FrogWatch in North America (AZA 2021AZA. 2021. < https://www.aza.org/frogwatch> Accessed 24 Nov 2021.
https://www.aza.org/frogwatch...
), FrogID in Australia (Australian Museum 2021AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM. 2021. < https://www.frogid.net.au> Accessed 24 Nov 2021.
https://www.frogid.net.au...
), and Frogs on the Road in the EU (Konnad Teel 2021KONNAD TEEL. 2021. < https://eu-citizen.science/project/96> Accessed 24 Nov 2021.
https://eu-citizen.science/project/96...
)), we only know of two recent studies on the topic in Brazil (Forti et al. 2022aFORTI LR, HEPP F, DE SOUZA JM, PROTAZIO A & SZABO JK. 2022a. Climate drives anuran breeding phenology in a continental perspective as revealed by citizen-collected data. Divers Distrib 28(10): 2094-2109., b) and a search of the Scopus database did not return any other publications. The participation of Brazilian volunteers in environmental research is still considered limited (Cunha et al. 2017CUNHA DGF ET AL. 2017. Citizen science participation in research in the environmental sciences: key factors related to projects’ success and longevity. An Acad Bras Cienc 89: 2229-2245.), nevertheless, there are many ongoing national initiatives that are producing interesting results. Some of these local or national monitoring programs deserve to be highlighted, such as Wikiaves (for birds - https://www.wikiaves.com.br/), DeOlhoNosCorais (for corals – https://serrapilheira.org/projetos/deolhonoscorais/), Sistema Urubu (for roadkill – https://sistemaurubu.com.br) and Guardiões da Chapada (for insect pollinators – Viana et al. 2022VIANA BF ET AL. 2022. Os Guardiões dos polinizadores e do serviço de polinização. In Ciência cidadã e polinizadores da América do Sul. Ghilardi N and Zattara E eds: Editora Cubo, 154 p.). Unfortunately, some of these initiatives do not facilitate the downloading of data en masse, do not openly share data or lack a platform to access the database, which leads to their underutilization (Tulloch et al. 2013TULLOCH AIT ET AL. 2013. Realising the full potential of citizen science monitoring programs. Biol Conserv 165: 128-138.).

The exponential growth of non-structured biodiversity data on online citizen science platforms (i.e., web pages that connect people who share scientific observations) can open new avenues to answer scientific questions with regard to various biological groups (Tulloch et al. 2013TULLOCH AIT ET AL. 2013. Realising the full potential of citizen science monitoring programs. Biol Conserv 165: 128-138.). In tropical countries, many amphibian species are poorly known, however, most of them are relatively easy to observe and are often charismatic and popular among observers (Jimenez & Lindemann-Matthies 2015aJIMENEZ JN & LINDEMANN-MATTHIES P. 2015a. Public knowledge and perception of toads and frogs in three areas of subtropical Southeast China. Soc Anim 23(2): 166-192., bJIMENEZ JN & LINDEMANN-MATTHIES P. 2015b. Public knowledge of, and attitudes to, frogs in Colombia. Anthrozoös 28(2): 319-332.). These characteristics make amphibians good subjects for new crowdsourcing projects or to be studied using data from existing generalist citizen science platforms. In addition, the latter option brings enormous benefits to scientists with restricted financial means. In particular, large amounts of data are often available, leaving researchers to focus on cleaning, organizing, analyzing and interpreting the data to answer study questions. Nevertheless, understanding and correcting for biases (either by filtering data or by applying various analytical methods) are crucial to obtain credible results (Szabo et al. 2012SZABO JK, FULLER RA & POSSINGHAM HP. 2012. A comparison of estimates of relative abundance from a weakly structured mass-participation bird atlas survey and a robustly designed monitoring scheme. Ibis 154: 468-479.).

While starting a new citizen science project would imply the costs of planning the project, recruiting, training and retention of participants, developing protocols, providing training material and other online resources, selecting adequate methods for the evaluation and validation of records, the use of an already consolidated platform can directly facilitate data access at no additional cost. In this context, iNaturalist is one of the most popular citizen science platforms that makes millions of biodiversity observations openly available, virtually all around the planet (https://www.inaturalist.org). The global community of contributors who submit photos and sound recordings to iNaturalist surpasses 3,000,000. iNaturalist also has over 280,000 identifiers with different taxonomical specialties. While the collected data are available to be used in different studies with regard to ecology, biogeography and conservation biology, the availability, quality and taxonomic coverage varies temporally and spatially around the world. Low-income countries in general and those in tropical zones in particular, have fewer observations and observers than high-income nations (Hughes et al. 2021HUGHES AC ET AL. 2021. Sampling biases shape our view of the natural world. Ecography 44: 1259-1269.). Evidently, regions with few observations and lower taxonomic coverage have limited opportunities to support the production of knowledge on biodiversity. Therefore, in this study we focus on the following study question: “To what degree citizen science has contributed and has the potential to contribute to our knowledge on amphibians in Brazil?” Based on this question, we provide a vision for Brazil to study amphibians using data in the iNaturalist database. We describe the relevant data available through iNaturalist the number of observations, as well as spatial and species coverage, and compare the representativeness of amphibian diversity among 202 countries. We provide this inter-country comparison to demonstrate the state of citizen science in Brazil compared to other countries in the world. In addition, we discuss how metadata can be accessed and how photographs can serve as a source of data. In conclusion, we discuss the potential of citizen science data for amphibian research in Brazil.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We filtered for research grade amphibian observations on iNaturalist on February 25, 2022. Observations are categorized as research grade when at least two people have submitted identifications to an observation and at least two-thirds of the identifiers agree on the identification of a taxon. We obtained the number of species, observations, observers and identifiers for 202 countries. We also obtained species diversity (i.e., the total number of species) for these countries using AmphibiaWeb (2021). Dividing the number of species represented in the iNaturalist database by the number of species on AmphibiaWeb, we calculated species coverage for each country. All statistical analysis were carried out in R version 4.1.0 (R Core Development Team 2020R CORE DEVELOPMENT TEAM. 2020. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. (Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL http://www.R-project.org/).). We tested the effect of species diversity on the number of observations using a Poisson generalized linear model after checking for statistical assumptions. We also modeled species coverage in relation to the number of observations and species diversity using beta regression through the betareg R package (Cribari-Neto & Zeileis 2010CRIBARI-NETO F & ZEILEIS A. 2010. Beta Regression in R. J Stat Softw 34(2): 1-24.). As we fitted distribution probability to proportional values, we divided the percentages by 100, transforming species coverage to values between 0 and 1. We substituted values of 1 (complete coverage) by 0.999 in order to run the beta regression. We elaborated graphs using the ggplot2 package (Wickham 2016WICKHAM H. 2016. ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. New York: Springer-Verlag.) to highlight the position of Brazil in relation to other countries based on the interaction between the above-mentioned variables. To illustrate spatial gaps, we produced a heat map based on the geographical locations of amphibian observations with exact coordinates (n = 8190) in Brazil using QGIS version 3.20 (QGiS Development Team 2021QGIS DEVELOPMENT TEAM. 2021. QGIS Geographic Information System. Open Source Geospatial Foundation Project. http://qgis.osgeo.org.
http://qgis.osgeo.org...
).

RESULTS

With 698 species (as of 21 September, 2022), Brazil had the highest amphibian diversity among all countries on iNaturalist, representing 61% of the described species in the country (Supplementary Material -Table SI). These species were represented by almost 14,866 observations submitted by 2906 observers and identified by 1118 collaborators. Species diversity affected the number of observations of amphibians in the platform (AIC = 556,0388, estimate = 3.024*10-03, z-value = 1150, p < 2*10-16). Countries with high amphibian species diversity had more observations than species-poor countries (Figure 1a). South American countries with high species diversity, such as Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador had a substantial contribution to the iNaturalist database (around 10,000 observations each). The beta regression model predicted that the number of observations and the species diversity for each country affected the proportion of species coverage (phi coefficient = 1.9254, z-value = 11.2, p < 2*10-16). While the number of observations positively contributed to the model (estimate = 4.361*10-06, z-value = 2.375, p = 0.0175 – Figure 1b), species diversity negatively affected species coverage (estimate = – 2.345*10-03, z-value = – 4.202, p = 2.65*10-05). Some countries (especially islands, such as Bahrain and Saint Helena) with high species coverage and few observations did not fit well to the model by also having few (often < 9) species. Many countries had a complete (100%) species coverage and the number of species was higher than predicted by the model (Figure 1b). Compared to other countries, Brazil had a high number of observations, as well as high species coverage (Table SI) in the iNaturalist database. However, most observations in Brazil come from the southeast, with large gaps in central western and northern regions, especially in Amazonia (Figure 2).

Figure 1
(a) Relation between species diversity (total number of species based on AmphibiaWeb) and the number of observations on iNaturalist. Each circle represents a country and darker circles indicate that the number of observations and species diversity among multiple countries fall to the same location. The green filled dot in the upper right quadrat represents Brazil. (b) Relation between the number of observations and species coverage on iNaturalist. The color of the circles indicates a gradient of species diversity with the green dot in the upper right quadrat indicating Brazil with over 1000 amphibian species. Note that for both graphs the axes with number of observations are on a logarithmic scale.
Figure 2
Heat map of anuran observations in Brazil in iNaturalist (n = 8190). Darker blue shades represent a higher density of observations concentrated around major cities.

DISCUSSION

Our results suggest that megadiverse countries should increase social engagement to improve the taxonomic coverage of citizen science data and therefore increase their applicability. Evidently, a higher number of observers will increase the number of observations on the iNaturalist platform, even though a large proportion of observations are submitted by “superobservers” (Rosenblatt et al. 2022ROSENBLATT CJ ET AL. 2022. Highly specialized recreationists contribute the most to the citizen science project eBird. Ornithol Appli 124: 1-16.). Brazil has the highest amphibian diversity in the world and based on our model this represents a particular challenge. This challenge could be tackled by more observers in order to increase species coverage in the iNaturalist dataset. Observers should increase efforts in areas with large spatial gaps. Nevertheless, Brazil still has a relatively high taxonomic coverage on this platform compared to other species-rich countries, such as Peru and Venezuela. While species misidentifications and temporal and geographical biases are known to plague citizen science data (Lukyanenko et al. 2016LUKYANENKO R, PARSONS J & WIERSMA YF. 2016. Emerging problems of data quality in citizen science. Conserv Biol 30: 447-449., Szabo et al. 2012SZABO JK, FULLER RA & POSSINGHAM HP. 2012. A comparison of estimates of relative abundance from a weakly structured mass-participation bird atlas survey and a robustly designed monitoring scheme. Ibis 154: 468-479.), observations in the iNaturalist dataset can potentially contribute to the study of Brazilian amphibians, based on the relatively high number of observations submitted by thousands of observers and identified by other contributors. Initiatives originating from or involving community scientists can complement data from traditional sources, such as museum collections (Spear et al. 2017SPEAR DM, PAULY GB & KAISER K. 2017. Citizen Science as a Tool for Augmenting Museum Collection Data from Urban Areas. Nat Ecol Evol 5: 144-145.) and scientific expeditions (Deutsch & Agostini 2017DEUTSCH CB & AGOSTINI G. 2017. In search of the horned frog (Ceratophrys ornata) in Argentina: complementing field surveys with citizen science. Herpetol Conserv Biol 12(3): 664-672.).

Many scientists who are working with citizen-collected datasets for the first time can be intimidated by the uncertainties with regard to species misidentifications (see for instance Gorleri & Areta 2022GORLERI FC & ARETA JI. 2022. Misidentifications in citizen science bias the phenological estimates of two hard-to-identify Elaenia flycatchers. Ibis 164(1): 13-26.) and the issues related to presence-only data. However, spatially and temporally unstructured or semi-structured occurrence data have been shown to provide valuable information with regard to species distributions and trends (Szabo et al. 2010SZABO JK ET AL. 2010. Regional avian species declines estimated from volunteer-collected long-term data using List Length Analysis. Ecol Appli 20(8): 2157-2169.). In addition, statistical tools, such as those adapted for phenological studies in the phenesse R package (Belitz et al. 2020BELITZ MW ET AL. 2020. The accuracy of phenology estimators for use with sparsely sampled presence-only observations. Methods Ecol Evol 11(10): 1273-1285.), can address some of these issues. While concerns about the reliability of observations made by non-professional scientists need to be considered, observations obtained by traditional means are rarely validated by a community of experts. In a citizen science platform, such as iNaturalist, observations are available to a community of peers, many of them professional biologists, who can give scientific legitimacy to taxon identifications.

Science is presumably about ideas, theory, rigor, and sensory data (i.e., observations). The citizen-science approach has inspired scientists to produce knowledge with public involvement about a plethora of topics. Among others, citizen-collected data have been used to monitor range extension (Hidalgo-Mora et al. 2021HIDALGO-MORA E, VALVERDE-CASTILLO A & ABARCA ALVARADO JG. 2021. Range extension of the Blue-Sided Leaf Frog, Agalychnis annae (Anura: Hylidae): Using citizen science across suburban areas in Costa Rica. Reptil Amphib 28(2): 264-267.), invasive species (Encarnação et al. 2021ENCARNAÇÃO JM, TEODÓSIO A & MORAIS P. 2021. Citizen science and biological invasions: A review. Front Environ Sci 8: 303., Johnson & Yates 2020JOHNSON S & YATES SS. 2020. First records of the North American Green Treefrog (Hyla cinerea) on New Providence, The Bahamas. Reptil Amphib 26(3): 257-258.), and diseases (Ecoclub Amphibian Group et al. 2016ECOCLUB AMPHIBIAN GROUP ET AL. 2016. Citizen scientists monitor a deadly fungus threatening amphibian communities in northern coastal California, USA. J Wild Dis 52(3): 516-523.). Photographs, sound recordings, and videos shared on citizen-science platforms allow to study behavior, including trophic interactions (Maritz & Maritz 2020MARITZ RA & MARITZ B. 2020. Sharing for science: high-resolution trophic interactions revealed rapidly by social media. PeerJ 8: e9485., Callaghan et al. 2021CALLAGHAN CT, POORE AGB, MESAGLIO T, MOLES AT, NAKAGAWA S, ROBERTS C, ROWLEY JJL, VERGÉS A, WILSHIRE JH & CORNWELL WK. 2021. Three Frontiers for the Future of Biodiversity Research Using Citizen Science Data. BioScience 71(1): 55-63.) and habitat use (Marsh et al. 2017MARSH DM ET AL. 2017. Effects of roads and land use on frog distributions across spatial scales and regions in the Eastern and Central United States. Divers Distrib 23(2): 158-170.). With regard to conservation, citizen-collected data have been used to describe the effects of urbanization (Mitchell et al. 2020MITCHELL BA, CALLAGHAN CT & ROWLEY JJL. 2020. Continental-scale citizen science data reveal no changes in acoustic responses of a widespread tree frog to an urbanisation gradient. J Urban Ecol 6(1): juaa002., Westgate et al. 2015WESTGATE MJ ET AL. 2015. Citizen science program shows urban areas have lower occurrence of frog species, but not accelerated declines. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0140973.), roads (Marsh et al. 2017MARSH DM ET AL. 2017. Effects of roads and land use on frog distributions across spatial scales and regions in the Eastern and Central United States. Divers Distrib 23(2): 158-170.) and bushfires (Rowley et al. 2020ROWLEY JJL, CALLAGHAN CT & CORNWELL WK. 2020. Widespread short-term persistence of frog species after the 2019–2020 bushfires in eastern Australia revealed by citizen science. Conserv Sci Prac 2(11): e287.).

Similar approaches can be implemented at national scales, as a large amount of data are already available (e.g., 14,866 amphibian observations identified at species level in Brazil). Metadata and natural history observations can be easily extracted from photos, videos and sound recordings on the website. Secondary data extracted from images have already been used to improve our knowledge on amphibian natural history at large spatial scales (Forti et al. 2022aFORTI LR, HEPP F, DE SOUZA JM, PROTAZIO A & SZABO JK. 2022a. Climate drives anuran breeding phenology in a continental perspective as revealed by citizen-collected data. Divers Distrib 28(10): 2094-2109.,b). For specific large projects that analyze phenology or distribution, metadata can be extracted using the rinat package (Barve & Hart 2021BARVE V & HART E. 2021. rinat: Access ‘iNaturalist’ Data Through APIs. R package version 0.1.8. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rinat.
https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rinat...
), which obtains data through the Application Programming Interface (API).

Data from projects using the iNaturalist platform can be suitable for analysis by undergraduate or graduate students or even senior researchers restricted by quarantine measures or federal budget cuts prohibiting field trips for data collection. Citizen science can also improve the attitudes of the general public towards amphibians and other threatened species (Reynolds et al. 2018REYNOLDS BR, TEAM SALAMANDER & WILSON TP. 2018. A Walk in the Woods: Changing Student Attitudes toward Amphibians and Reptiles. Creat Educ 9: 182-191., Steven et al. 2017STEVEN R, MORRISON C & CASTLEY JG. 2017. Exploring attitudes and understanding of global conservation practice among birders and avitourists for enhanced conservation of birds. Bird Conserv Int 27: 224-236.). Therefore, we encourage biologists occupying senior academic positions to use the iNaturalist platform for project-based learning at their educational institutions (Forti in press 2023FORTI LR, RETUCI PONTES M, AUGUSTO-ALVES G, MARTINS A, HEPP F & SZABO JK. 2022b. Data collected by citizen scientists reveal the role of climate and phylogeny on the frequency of shelter types used by frogs across the Americas. Zoology 155: 126052.). This approach can nurture general values of science and nature protection (Niemiller et al. 2021NIEMILLER K ET AL. 2021. Addressing ‘biodiversity naivety’ through project-based learning using iNaturalist. J Nat Conserv 64: 126070.). A simple project to list frog species around a university campus can be a useful initiative for students to improve their natural history knowledge and affinity for biodiversity conservation (Reynolds et al. 2018REYNOLDS BR, TEAM SALAMANDER & WILSON TP. 2018. A Walk in the Woods: Changing Student Attitudes toward Amphibians and Reptiles. Creat Educ 9: 182-191.). In conclusion, we advocate that citizen science projects should be encouraged in Brazil and other countries with high amphibian diversity. Northern and central western Brazil in particular lack amphibian observations and could be targeted by visiting or local naturalists. We also showed the potential to study amphibians in Brazil using citizen science, in particular through the iNaturalist platform. Finally, we expect that once researchers understand and use this approach, they will also spread the information about the value of this tool.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are thankful to Blandina F. Viana, Fabio Hepp, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on the manuscript. We also thank the thousands of volunteers who share their observations on iNaturalist, thereby making a valuable contribution to biodiversity research. LRF thanks the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES - Finance Code 001) for his post-doctoral fellowship.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

Figure 1. (a) Relation between species diversity (total number of species based on AmphibiaWeb) and the number of observations on iNaturalist. Each circle represents a country and darker circles indicate that the number of observations and species diversity among multiple countries fall to the same location. The green filled dot in the upper right quadrat represents Brazil. (b) Relation between the number of observations and species coverage on iNaturalist. The color of the circles indicates a gradient of species diversity with the green dot in the upper right quadrat indicating Brazil with over 1000 amphibian species. Note that for both graphs the axes with number of observations are on a logarithmic scale.

REFERENCES

  • ALEXANDRINO ER et al. 2022. Which birds are Brazilians seeing on urban and nonurban feeders? An analysis based on a collective online birding. Ornithology Research 30: 104-117. AmphibiaWeb 2021 <https://amphibiaweb.org> University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA. Accessed 24 Nov 2021.
  • AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM. 2021. < https://www.frogid.net.au> Accessed 24 Nov 2021.
    » https://www.frogid.net.au
  • AZA. 2021. < https://www.aza.org/frogwatch> Accessed 24 Nov 2021.
    » https://www.aza.org/frogwatch
  • BARVE V & HART E. 2021. rinat: Access ‘iNaturalist’ Data Through APIs. R package version 0.1.8. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rinat
    » https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rinat
  • BELITZ MW ET AL. 2020. The accuracy of phenology estimators for use with sparsely sampled presence-only observations. Methods Ecol Evol 11(10): 1273-1285.
  • BONNEY R ET AL. 2009a. Public Participation in Scientific Research: Defining the Field and Assessing Its Potential for Informal Science Education. A CAISE Inquiry Group Report. Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE).
  • BONNEY R, COOPER CB, DICKINSON JL, KELLING S, PHILLIPS T, ROSENBERG KV & SHIRK J. 2009b. “Citizen Science: A developing tool for expanding science knowledge and scientific literacy.” BioScience 59(11): 977-984.
  • CALLAGHAN CT, POORE AGB, MESAGLIO T, MOLES AT, NAKAGAWA S, ROBERTS C, ROWLEY JJL, VERGÉS A, WILSHIRE JH & CORNWELL WK. 2021. Three Frontiers for the Future of Biodiversity Research Using Citizen Science Data. BioScience 71(1): 55-63.
  • CRIBARI-NETO F & ZEILEIS A. 2010. Beta Regression in R. J Stat Softw 34(2): 1-24.
  • CUNHA DGF ET AL. 2017. Citizen science participation in research in the environmental sciences: key factors related to projects’ success and longevity. An Acad Bras Cienc 89: 2229-2245.
  • DE SOUZA E, LIMASANTOS J, ENTIAUSPENETO OM, DOS SANTOS MM, DE MOURA PR & HINGSTZAHER E. 2022. Ophiophagy in Brazilian birds: a contribution from a collaborative platform of citizen science. Ornithology Research 30: 15-24.
  • DEUTSCH CB & AGOSTINI G. 2017. In search of the horned frog (Ceratophrys ornata) in Argentina: complementing field surveys with citizen science. Herpetol Conserv Biol 12(3): 664-672.
  • DEVICTOR V, WHITTAKER RJ & BELTRAME C. 2010. Beyond scarcity: citizen science programmes as useful tools for conservation biogeography. Divers Distrib 16: 354-362.
  • ECOCLUB AMPHIBIAN GROUP ET AL. 2016. Citizen scientists monitor a deadly fungus threatening amphibian communities in northern coastal California, USA. J Wild Dis 52(3): 516-523.
  • ENCARNAÇÃO JM, TEODÓSIO A & MORAIS P. 2021. Citizen science and biological invasions: A review. Front Environ Sci 8: 303.
  • FORTI LR. IN PRESS. Students as citizen scientists: project-based learning through the iNaturalist platform could provide useful biodiversity data. Biodiversity. DOI: 10.1080/14888386.2023.2174595.
  • FORTI LR, HEPP F, DE SOUZA JM, PROTAZIO A & SZABO JK. 2022a. Climate drives anuran breeding phenology in a continental perspective as revealed by citizen-collected data. Divers Distrib 28(10): 2094-2109.
  • FORTI LR, RETUCI PONTES M, AUGUSTO-ALVES G, MARTINS A, HEPP F & SZABO JK. 2022b. Data collected by citizen scientists reveal the role of climate and phylogeny on the frequency of shelter types used by frogs across the Americas. Zoology 155: 126052.
  • GORLERI FC & ARETA JI. 2022. Misidentifications in citizen science bias the phenological estimates of two hard-to-identify Elaenia flycatchers. Ibis 164(1): 13-26.
  • GRAY S ET AL. 2017. Combining participatory modelling and citizen science to support volunteer conservation action. Biol Conserv 208: 76-86.
  • HAKLAY MM ET AL. 2021. What is citizen science? The challenges of definition. In: The science of citizen science. Vohland K, Land-Zandstra A, Ceccaroni L, Lemmens R, Perelló J, Ponti M, Samson and Wagenknecht K (Eds), p. 13-34.
  • HIDALGO-MORA E, VALVERDE-CASTILLO A & ABARCA ALVARADO JG. 2021. Range extension of the Blue-Sided Leaf Frog, Agalychnis annae (Anura: Hylidae): Using citizen science across suburban areas in Costa Rica. Reptil Amphib 28(2): 264-267.
  • HUGHES AC ET AL. 2021. Sampling biases shape our view of the natural world. Ecography 44: 1259-1269.
  • JIMENEZ JN & LINDEMANN-MATTHIES P. 2015a. Public knowledge and perception of toads and frogs in three areas of subtropical Southeast China. Soc Anim 23(2): 166-192.
  • JIMENEZ JN & LINDEMANN-MATTHIES P. 2015b. Public knowledge of, and attitudes to, frogs in Colombia. Anthrozoös 28(2): 319-332.
  • JOHNSON S & YATES SS. 2020. First records of the North American Green Treefrog (Hyla cinerea) on New Providence, The Bahamas. Reptil Amphib 26(3): 257-258.
  • KONNAD TEEL. 2021. < https://eu-citizen.science/project/96> Accessed 24 Nov 2021.
    » https://eu-citizen.science/project/96
  • KULLENBERG C & KASPEROWSKI D. 2016. What Is Citizen Science? – A Scientometric Meta-Analysis. PLoS ONE 11(1): e0147152.
  • LUKYANENKO R, PARSONS J & WIERSMA YF. 2016. Emerging problems of data quality in citizen science. Conserv Biol 30: 447-449.
  • MACHADO AA ET AL. 2021. Participatory monitoring of marine biological invaders: a novel program to include citizen scientists. J Coast Conserv 25: 25.
  • MARITZ RA & MARITZ B. 2020. Sharing for science: high-resolution trophic interactions revealed rapidly by social media. PeerJ 8: e9485.
  • MARSH DM ET AL. 2017. Effects of roads and land use on frog distributions across spatial scales and regions in the Eastern and Central United States. Divers Distrib 23(2): 158-170.
  • MESAGLIO T ET AL. 2021. First Known Photographs of Living Specimens: the power of iNaturalist for recording rare tropical butterfies. J Insect Conserv 25: 905-911.
  • MITCHELL BA, CALLAGHAN CT & ROWLEY JJL. 2020. Continental-scale citizen science data reveal no changes in acoustic responses of a widespread tree frog to an urbanisation gradient. J Urban Ecol 6(1): juaa002.
  • NERY MS ET AL. 2021. Citizen Science for Monitoring Primates in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest: Preliminary Results from a Critical Conservation Tool. Primate Conserv 35: 103-115.
  • NEWMAN G ET AL. 2011. The art and science of multi-scale citizen science support. Ecol Informs 6(3-4): 217-227.
  • NIEMILLER K ET AL. 2021. Addressing ‘biodiversity naivety’ through project-based learning using iNaturalist. J Nat Conserv 64: 126070.
  • QGIS DEVELOPMENT TEAM. 2021. QGIS Geographic Information System. Open Source Geospatial Foundation Project. http://qgis.osgeo.org
    » http://qgis.osgeo.org
  • R CORE DEVELOPMENT TEAM. 2020. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. (Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL http://www.R-project.org/).
  • REYNOLDS BR, TEAM SALAMANDER & WILSON TP. 2018. A Walk in the Woods: Changing Student Attitudes toward Amphibians and Reptiles. Creat Educ 9: 182-191.
  • ROSENBLATT CJ ET AL. 2022. Highly specialized recreationists contribute the most to the citizen science project eBird. Ornithol Appli 124: 1-16.
  • ROWLEY JJL, CALLAGHAN CT & CORNWELL WK. 2020. Widespread short-term persistence of frog species after the 2019–2020 bushfires in eastern Australia revealed by citizen science. Conserv Sci Prac 2(11): e287.
  • SCHUBERT SC, MANICA LT & GUARALDO AC. 2019. Revealing the potential of a huge citizen-science platform to study bird migration. Emu 119(4): 364-373.
  • SPEAR DM, PAULY GB & KAISER K. 2017. Citizen Science as a Tool for Augmenting Museum Collection Data from Urban Areas. Nat Ecol Evol 5: 144-145.
  • STEVEN R, MORRISON C & CASTLEY JG. 2017. Exploring attitudes and understanding of global conservation practice among birders and avitourists for enhanced conservation of birds. Bird Conserv Int 27: 224-236.
  • SZABO JK ET AL. 2010. Regional avian species declines estimated from volunteer-collected long-term data using List Length Analysis. Ecol Appli 20(8): 2157-2169.
  • SZABO JK, FULLER RA & POSSINGHAM HP. 2012. A comparison of estimates of relative abundance from a weakly structured mass-participation bird atlas survey and a robustly designed monitoring scheme. Ibis 154: 468-479.
  • TULLOCH AIT ET AL. 2013. Realising the full potential of citizen science monitoring programs. Biol Conserv 165: 128-138.
  • VIANA BF ET AL. 2022. Os Guardiões dos polinizadores e do serviço de polinização. In Ciência cidadã e polinizadores da América do Sul. Ghilardi N and Zattara E eds: Editora Cubo, 154 p.
  • WESTGATE MJ ET AL. 2015. Citizen science program shows urban areas have lower occurrence of frog species, but not accelerated declines. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0140973.
  • WICKHAM H. 2016. ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    14 Apr 2023
  • Date of issue
    2023

History

  • Received
    23 Sept 2022
  • Accepted
    11 Oct 2022
Academia Brasileira de Ciências Rua Anfilófio de Carvalho, 29, 3º andar, 20030-060 Rio de Janeiro RJ Brasil, Tel: +55 21 3907-8100 - Rio de Janeiro - RJ - Brazil
E-mail: aabc@abc.org.br