Identifying gaps in the photographic record of the vascular plant flora of the Americas

Pitman, Nigel C. A.; Suwa, Tomomi; Ulloa, Carmen Ulloa; Miller, James S.; Solomon, James C.; Philipp, Juliana; Lewis, Abigail Derby; Perk, Sinem; Bonnet, Pierre; Joly, Alexis; Tobler, Mathias W.; Best, Jason; Janovec, John P.; Nixon, Kevin C.; Thiers, Barbara M.; Tulig, Melissa; Gilbert, Edward; Forzza, Rafaela Campostrini; Zimbrão, Geraldo; Filardi, Fabiana Luiza Ranzato; Turner, Robert; Zuloaga, Fernando O.; Belgrano, Manuel J.; Zanotti, Christian A.; Vos, Jurriaan M. de; Giehl, Eduardo Luís Hettwer; Paine, C. E. Timothy; Queiroz, Rubens Texeira de; Romoleroux, Katya; Souza, Everton Hilo de

doi:10.1038/s41477-021-00974-2

Cited by 8 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Despite the impressive recent growth and potential of searchable online databases to build a photographic record of the Australian flora, this study highlights how incomplete this biodiversity resource currently is. We suspect that Australia is not a global outlier in this sense (Pitman et al ., 2021) and that upwards of 100 000 vascular plant species globally would similarly lack a findable photograph. This shortfall is crucial because it massively inhibits identification and monitoring for these species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whilst physical vouchers remain the gold standard for botanical specimens (Culley, 2013; Funk et al ., 2018), allowing for tissue and DNA sampling and the examination of microscopic features among many benefits, the importance of photographic vouchers is being increasingly recognised (Baskauf & Kirchoff, 2008; Pitman et al ., 2021), especially given they can capture information that is often absent or lost in physical vouchers (Gómez‐Bellver et al ., 2019). Perhaps most obviously, photographs record colour, an important feature for plant identification across many taxa, but one which is typically lost over time in herbarium sheets and other preserved specimens (Heberling & Isaac, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet, there are still many plant species which are only represented by images of herbarium sheets, have no photographs in any online databases, or which have never been photographed at all. A recent census of the vascular flora of the Americas found that just 53% of c. 125 000 vascular plant species across North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean were represented by at least one field photograph in one of 25 surveyed online databases (Pitman et al, 2021). Whilst the USA and Canada were well-documented (93% of species photographed), the three most plant-rich regions (> 20 000 vascular plant species), Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, were relatively poorly documented (c. 55-65% of species photographed).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whilst the USA and Canada were well-documented (93% of species photographed), the three most plant-rich regions (> 20 000 vascular plant species), Mexico, Colombia and Brazil, were relatively poorly documented (c. 55-65% of species photographed). Some of these 'missing' species have actually been photographed, with the images remaining unidentified or not accessible in a major online database (Pitman et al, 2021), but many have genuinely never been photographed in the field. Whilst the driving factors behind these true absences are not entirely clear, highly endemic species and those with small populations are generally less likely to be photographed (Pitman et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Photographs as an essential biodiversity resource: drivers of gaps in the vascular plant photographic record

et al. 2023

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The photographic record is increasingly becoming an important biodiversity resource for primary research and conservation monitoring. However, globally, there are important gaps in this record even in relatively well-researched floras.To quantify the gaps in the Australian native vascular plant photographic record, we systematically surveyed 33 sources of well-curated species photographs, assembling a list of species with accessible and verifiable photographs, as well as the species for which this search failed.Of 21 077 Australian native species, 3715 lack a verifiable photograph across our 33 surveyed resources. There are three major geographic hotspots of unphotographed species in Australia, all far from current population centres. Many unphotographed species are small in stature or uncharismatic, and many are also recently described.The large number of recently described species without accessible photographs was surprising. There are longstanding efforts in Australia to organise the plant photographic record, but in the absence of a global consensus to treat photographs as an essential biodiversity resource, this has not become common practice. Many recently described species are small-range endemics and some have special conservation status. Completing the botanical photographic record across the globe will facilitate a virtuous feedback loop of more efficient identification, monitoring and conservation.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Photographs as an essential biodiversity resource: drivers of gaps in the vascular plant photographic record

et al. 2023

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“…Citizen science can also draw on social media (e.g. Liberatore et al 2018), where content shared publicly outside of dedicated citizen science platforms can be used to contribute photographic records of species for identification (Pitman et al 2021). By integrating data from diverse sources, research infrastructures facilitate the ability to capture richer information that may promote more complex scientific outcomes (McClure et al 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Open access research infrastructures are critical for sustained citizen science growth: a case study of Australia’s national biodiversity platform, the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA)

Roger¹,

Slayter²,

Kellie³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Citizen science continues to make a substantial contribution to a wide variety of scientific disciplines by allowing the public to be involved in activities like idea generation, study design, data collection and analysis. Although the pace of citizen science has exploded in recent decades, there remains untapped potential for scientific output through investment in research infrastructure that more specifically supports citizen science activities. Here, we provide a case study of how the biodiversity data aggregator the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) has supported the growth of citizen science over the past decade. We show that around one quarter of data collection projects provide around half of all species observation records in the ALA, supplementing specimen-based data to provide more comprehensive visualisation of species distributions. We then discuss how large data aggregators like the ALA support common challenges of the citizen science community by implementing tools to standardise complex data, safely store sensitive data, and improve participation and discoverability of citizen science data. Our findings demonstrate the importance of investment in research infrastructure to support and augment the scientific value of the citizen science movement globally.

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Overview of LifeCLEF 2022: An Evaluation of Machine-Learning Based Species Identification and Species Distribution Prediction

Joly

Goëau

Kahl

et al. 2022

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Building accurate knowledge of the identity, the geographic distribution and the evolution of species is essential for the sustainable development of humanity, as well as for biodiversity conservation. However, the difficulty of identifying plants and animals is hindering the aggregation of new data and knowledge. Identifying and naming living plants or animals is almost impossible for the general public and is often difficult even for professionals and naturalists. Bridging this gap is a key step towards enabling effective biodiversity monitoring systems. The LifeCLEF campaign, presented in this paper, has been promoting and evaluating advances in this domain since 2011. The 2021 edition proposes four data-oriented challenges related to the identification and prediction of biodiversity: (i) PlantCLEF: cross-domain plant identification based on herbarium sheets, (ii) BirdCLEF: bird species recognition in audio soundscapes, (iii) GeoLifeCLEF: remote sensing based prediction of species, and (iv) SnakeCLEF: Automatic Snake Species Identification with Country-Level Focus. LifeCLEF Lab OverviewAccurately identifying organisms observed in the wild is an essential step in ecological studies. Unfortunately, observing and identifying living organisms requires high levels of expertise. For instance, plants alone account for more than

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Identifying gaps in the photographic record of the vascular plant flora of the Americas

Cited by 8 publications

References 13 publications

Photographs as an essential biodiversity resource: drivers of gaps in the vascular plant photographic record

Photographs as an essential biodiversity resource: drivers of gaps in the vascular plant photographic record

Open access research infrastructures are critical for sustained citizen science growth: a case study of Australia’s national biodiversity platform, the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA)

Overview of LifeCLEF 2022: An Evaluation of Machine-Learning Based Species Identification and Species Distribution Prediction

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