eButterfly: Leveraging Massive Online Citizen Science for Butterfly Conservation

Abstract

Data collection, storage, analysis, visualization, and dissemination are changing rapidly due to advances in new technologies driven by computer science and universal access to the internet. These technologies and web connections place human observers front and center in citizen science-driven research and are critical in generating new discoveries and innovation in such fields as astronomy, biodiversity, and meteorology. Research projects utilizing a citizen science approach address scientific problems at regional, continental, and even global scales otherwise impossible for a single lab or even a small collection of academic researchers. Here we describe eButterfly an integrative checklist-based butterfly monitoring and database web-platform that leverages the skills and knowledge of recreational butterfly enthusiasts to create a globally accessible unified database of butterfly observations across North America. Citizen scientists, conservationists, policy makers, and scientists are using eButterfly data to better understand the biological patterns of butterfly species diversity and how environmental conditions shape these patterns in space and time. eButterfly in collaboration with thousands of butterfly enthusiasts has created a near real-time butterfly data resource producing tens of thousands of observations per year open to all to share and explore.

Crowd‐Sourced Databases as Essential Elements for Forest Service Partnerships and Aquatic Resource Conservation

“…Although the crowd-sourcing approach to database compilation and use is not exclusive to the USFS in this era of big data and citizen science (Hampton et al 2013(Hampton et al , 2015Prudic et al 2017), the agency is uniquely positioned to capitalize on these trends. An extensive land base, a dedicated workforce distributed across those lands, and a research branch that exists to assist managers in conservation management are key elements.…”

Entomological citizen science in Canada

“…However, the eBird team has been extremely helpful and supportive of eButterfly, sharing technical knowledge as well as insights into their successes and failures. The main theme that has emerged from this dialogue has been the importance of making the database useful to naturalists for their own purposes (Prudic et al 2017). In other words, the administrators at eBird learned that birders have limited motivation to "help the scientists", but significant motivation to keep track of their own sightings, photographs, and lists (including the all-important "life list" of all species seen by a particular birder).…”

“…In terms of particular discoveries, enhanced resolution of geographic ranges and phenology, public participation, and endurance, the answer is clearly "yes". With respect to publications based on broad-scale analysis of citizen science data, perhaps it is too early to expect many analyses of trends, although Prudic et al (2017) report that, "new collaborations and opportunities are on the horizon". It is worth keeping in mind that citizen science projects allow long-term data collection, on a temporal scale quite unlike the usual two to three-year studies performed by graduate student researchers or many government research projects.…”

“…For example, citizen science databases have been used in countries outside Canada to analyse scale-dependent effects on temporal changes in syrphid fly species richness in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom (Keil et al 2010), to predict the distribution of an introduced bee in Japan (Kadoya et al 2009), to update the distribution of a coccinellid beetle in the United States of America (Smythe et al 2013), and to elucidate broad patterns of pollinator abundance in France (Deguines et al 2012). Canadian examples are, to my knowledge, confined to analyses of speed of migration as documented by eButterfly (Prudic et al 2017).…”

“…The most successful online butterfly databasing project in North America is eButterfly (Prudic et al 2017), an initially Canadian effort inspired by the highly successful citizen science ornithology project eBird, hosted by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology (Ithaca, New York, United States of America) (Bonney et al 2009;Sullivan et al 2014). eButterfly, in turn, contributes records to iNaturalist Canada, coordinated by the Canadian Wildlife Federation.…”