Crowdsourced online images provide insights into predator-prey interactions of putative natural enemies

Hernandez, Madison; Masonick, Paul; Weirauch, Christiane

doi:10.1016/j.fooweb.2019.e00126

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Although a number of studies have made use of digital media platforms (i.e., not specifically designed for citizen science) to better understand the geographic and temporal distribution of biological traits or organisms (Leighton et al, 2016;Jiménez-Valverde et al, 2019;Marshall & Strine, 2019), other studies have started to detail ecological and evolutionary processes explicitly. Google Images has been used to quantify insect-pollinator relationships (Bahlai & Landis, 2016), commensalism-like relationships between birds and large mammals (Mikula et al, 2018), to assess the diets of predatory birds (Mikula et al, 2016;Naude et al, 2019), and the diets of predatory insects (Hernandez, Masonick & Weirauch, 2019). Similarly, Facebook has been used to quantify co-grazing patterns between two deer species (Mori, Bari & Coraglia, 2018) and ad hoc observations have revealed a fascinating foraging strategy in skunks (Pesendorfer, Dickerson & Dragoo, 2018).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sharing for science: high-resolution trophic interactions revealed rapidly by social media

Maritz

2020

PeerJ

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Discrete, ephemeral natural phenomena with low spatial or temporal predictability are incredibly challenging to study systematically. In ecology, species interactions, which constitute the functional backbone of ecological communities, can be notoriously difficult to characterise especially when taxa are inconspicuous and the interactions of interest (e.g., trophic events) occur infrequently, rapidly, or variably in space and time. Overcoming such issues has historically required significant time and resource investment to collect sufficient data, precluding the answering of many ecological and evolutionary questions. Here, we show the utility of social media for rapidly collecting observations of ephemeral ecological phenomena with low spatial and temporal predictability by using a Facebook group dedicated to collecting predation events involving reptiles and amphibians in sub-Saharan Africa. We collected over 1900 independent feeding observations using Facebook from 2015 to 2019 involving 83 families of predators and 129 families of prey. Feeding events by snakes were particularly well-represented with close to 1,100 feeding observations recorded. Relative to an extensive literature review spanning 226 sources and 138 years, we found that social media has provided snake dietary records faster than ever before in history with prey being identified to a finer taxonomic resolution and showing only modest concordance with the literature due to the number of novel interactions that were detected. Finally, we demonstrate that social media can outperform other citizen science image-based approaches (iNaturalist and Google Images) highlighting the versatility of social media and its ability to function as a citizen science platform.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sharing for science: high-resolution trophic interactions revealed rapidly by social media

Maritz

2020

PeerJ

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“…In this context, the growth and popularity of digital and social media platforms (for example, YouTube) may provide valuable sources for documenting some rare behaviours [34,35] including thanatological reactions. Of late, records and anecdotal events obtained from public digital platforms are being increasingly used in scientific studies of various topics [36][37][38] including preypredator interactions [39], human-wildlife interactions [40], and conservation and welfare-related issues of various taxa [41][42][43][44].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Viewing the rare through public lenses: insights into dead calf carrying and other thanatological responses in Asian elephants using YouTube videos

2022

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Documenting the behavioural repertoire of an animal species is important for understanding that species' natural history. Many behaviours such as mating, parturition and death may be observed only rarely in the wild due to the low frequency of occurrence, short duration and the species' elusiveness. Opportunistic documentation of rare behaviours is therefore valuable for deciphering the behavioural complexity in a species. In this context, digital platforms may serve as useful data sources for studying rare behaviours in animals. Using videos uploaded on YouTube, we document and construct a tentative repertoire of thanatological responses (death-related behaviours) in Asian elephants ( Elephas maximus ). The most frequently observed thanatological responses included postural changes, guarding/keeping vigil, touching, investigating the carcass, epimeletic behaviours and vocalizations. We also describe some infrequently observed behaviours, including carrying dead calves by adult females, re-assurance-like behaviours and attempts to support dying or dead conspecifics, some of which were only known anecdotally in Asian elephants. Our observations indicate the significance of open-source video data on digital platforms for gaining insights into rarely observed behaviours and support the accumulating evidence for higher cognitive abilities of Asian elephants in the context of comparative thanatology.

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“…“Behavior, ecology, and natural history” was the largest category that relied on data directly from photographs, with 204 publications (9.6%). Behaviors that have been documented through community photographs include predator–prey interactions (Hernandez et al 2019, Priyadarshana 2021) and communal prey subduction (Forthman and Weirauch 2012), parental care of eggs (Leocádio et al 2020) and young (Giribet and Moreno-González 2021), phoretic associations (Parks 2016), oviposition and egg-laying sites (Early 2019, Heraty et al 2019), nectar robbing (Fateryga 2021), spider web decorating (Kerr 2021), and mating behavior (Matteini Palmerini 2013, Dioli and Zanetti 2019, Ament et al 2021). Other ecological and natural history discoveries include host and food records for herbivorous (Pérez Hidalgo et al 2009, Wheeler 2017b, Roets et al 2019), fungivorous (Macias et al 2019), saproxylic (Muscarella et al 2013), coprophagic (Deschodt et al 2021), parasitic (Paiero et al 2021), and predatory arthropods (Forthman and Weirauch 2012, Gordon and Weirauch 2016, Powell et al 2021), including arthropods preying on vertebrates (Nyffeler and Altig 2020, Nyffeler and Whitfield 2021), the first feeding record for a family (Skvarla et al 2016a), pollinator host records (Wilson et al 2020, Aripin et al 2021), pollinator bias across flower species (Villalona et al 2020, Catron 2021), pathogen surveys (Douch and Poupa 2021), habitat (Deschodt et al 2021) and nest site preference (Maher et al 2019, Saunders et al 2021), how flower orientation affects pollination via butterfly wings (Daniels et al 2020), and prevalence of cooperative nest founding (Sheehan et al 2015).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online community photo-sharing in entomology: a large-scale review with suggestions on best practices

Skvarla,

Fisher

2023

Annals of the Entomological Society of America

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Over the past 2 decades, digital photography has grown increasingly accessible. This has ushered in a golden age of community science, where nonspecialists share natural history observations from across the globe via digital media. Importantly, these observations are accessible to researchers, who can readily share expertise directly with the community and connect observations and observers with research projects. This has fueled a rising number of publications combining specialist and nonspecialist observations, which occasionally make national and international headlines. Entomology has embraced this trend, but the scope and impact are not clear. A review of its effect on the field is therefore warranted. Herein, we review and analyze publications that incorporated information from photographs shared on photo-sharing websites. In total, 2,123 publications that incorporated information from 77 photo-sharing websites were examined. Seven websites accounted for 66% of the publication citations. 84.6% of publications focused on data from the Holarctic ecoregion (56.2% Palearctic and 28.4% Nearctic). Forty-six arthropod orders were represented, but the Big Five—Lepidoptera, Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, Hemiptera, and Diptera—accounted for 75% of all publications. We divide the publications into 28 discovery and use categories, review how community photograph data has been used within each category, and provide examples of categories utilized in nonentomology natural history fields, which we hope will provide inspiration and spur future research. We also discuss benefits and considerations when using such data—including the accuracy of identifications, inherent biases, and digital data impermanence—and suggest best practices to follow.

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Crowdsourced online images provide insights into predator-prey interactions of putative natural enemies

Cited by 10 publications

References 76 publications

Sharing for science: high-resolution trophic interactions revealed rapidly by social media

Sharing for science: high-resolution trophic interactions revealed rapidly by social media

Viewing the rare through public lenses: insights into dead calf carrying and other thanatological responses in Asian elephants using YouTube videos

Online community photo-sharing in entomology: a large-scale review with suggestions on best practices

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