Butterflies Australia: a national citizen science database for monitoring changes in the distribution and abundance of Australian butterflies

Abstract

Conservation biology is a field of science that is heavily biased against insects and allied invertebrates, largely due to a data deficiency feedback loop that maintains a cycle of ignorance and inaction. Because many invertebrate groups are, and remain, extremely data poor, it is frequently difficult to conduct even the most basic conservation actions, such as status evaluation, listing, recovery and monitoring of threatened species. Thus, declines and extinctions of invertebrates are frequently undetected and poorly documented. To address this data deficiency, we have developed a new national database – Butterflies Australia – for one insect taxon that integrates citizen science (data collectors) with global, standardised monitoring protocols and emerging tools in technology and biodiversity informatics. The database is created from a platform, which consists of a phone app and website, that offers the potential to rapidly increase data availability on the occurrence of Australian butterflies at a far greater scale than was previously possible, as well as to monitor trends in their distribution and abundance over time. We discuss the attributes and importance of successful citizen science projects and quantitative methods for monitoring butterflies, both from an Australian perspective and in an international context, and then outline the operational aspects of the Butterflies Australia platform. A review of survey methods that have been used for monitoring or inventorying butterflies in Australia over the past 50 years revealed a diverse array of sampling techniques, with little standardisation between studies and wide variation in space (sampling unit) and time (sampling effort). Transect counts, in particular, have rarely followed the international guidelines recommended for standardised global butterfly monitoring. Finally, we discuss the benefits of our new citizen science tool for butterflies and potentially other invertebrates. We envisage that our platform will engender increased community awareness, improved quantity and quality of data collection, better conservation policy and planning, as well as enhanced resourcing and research for the conservation management of butterflies.

Distributional modelling, megafires and data gaps highlight probable underestimation of climate change risk for two lizards from Australia’s montane rainforests

“…One possible avenue to address some of these gaps, especially in regions such as the GWARH that are accessible, comes from the emergence and popularity of citizen science platforms (HerpMapper 2020; QuestaGame 2020; Rowley & Callaghan 2020; Sanderson et al . 2021). These resources, along with growing enthusiasm for wildlife photography (Fennell & Yazdan Panah 2020), provide good opportunities for citizen scientists to record these taxa in the wild.…”

“…A recent analysis of the IUCN status of ca.92% of global skink fauna reinforced the need for improved data collection, estimating 14% are data-deficient, 8% remain unassessed, and with ca.95% of listings based on small geographic range, population trends for ca.43% are unknown (Chapple et al 2021). One possible avenue to address some of these gaps, especially in regions such as the GWARH that are accessible, comes from the emergence and popularity of citizen science platforms (HerpMapper 2020; Ques-taGame 2020; Rowley & Callaghan 2020;Sanderson et al 2021). These resources, along with growing enthusiasm for wildlife photography (Fennell & Yazdan Panah 2020), provide good opportunities for citizen scientists to record these taxa in the wild.…”

Composition and Functional Groups of Insects in Grain Crops from South-Ern Guanajuato

“…The samplings were systematic every 10 days, with a duration of one day, and the sampling technique consisted of doing zigzag-shaped walks on the entire surface of the transect with the possibility of homogeneously collecting all insects, potentially found in the sampling site. In addition to the above, a distance of 10 meters was left between crops and transects to have data independence [15], also because transects are the most useful monitoring method [16].…”

An investigation into the spatiotemporal patterns of the Nymphalid butterfly Vagrans egista sinha (Kollar, [1844])

“…C-science is extensively used in lepidopterology, especially for butterflies, with the number of species studied and sites monitored outweighing all vertebrate groups in Europe (Schmeller et al, 2009). It is used for several purposes, such as collecting photographs of rare butterflies (Mesaglio et al, 2021), monitoring populations at a national level (Sanderson, Braby & Bond, 2021), and even studying the range expansion of a Nymphalid butterfly species distributed through the Indomalayan and Australasian realms (similar to the current study) (Chowdhury et al, 2021). Reliability of c-science data, especially when it comes to spatiotemporal patterns of butterflies depends on a wide-variety of components of a c-science model, including accuracy of identification of species by participants, particularly for cryptic species (Vantieghem et al, 2016); irregular nature of survey efforts over time; incompleteness and selectivity in observation; geographical bias (van Strien, van Swaay, & Termaat, 2013).…”