Investigating the potential of social media and citizen science data to track changes in species' distributions

Abstract

How to best track species as they rapidly alter their distributions in response to climate change has become a key scientific priority. Information on species distributions is derived from biological records, which tend to be primarily sourced from traditional recording schemes, but increasingly also by citizen science initiatives and social media platforms, with biological recording having become more accessible to the general public. To date, however, our understanding of the respective potential of social media and citizen science to complement the information gathered by traditional recording schemes remains limited, particularly when it comes to tracking species on the move with climate change. To address this gap, we investigated how species occurrence observations vary between different sources and to what extent traditional, citizen science, and social media records are complementary, using the Banded Demoiselle ( Calopteryx splendens ) in Britain as a case study. Banded Demoiselle occurrences were extracted from citizen science initiatives (iRecord and iNaturalist) and social media platforms (Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter), and compared with traditional records primarily sourced from the British Dragonfly Society. Our results showed that species presence maps differ between record types, with 61% of the citizen science, 58% of the traditional, and 49% of the social media observations being unique to that data type. Banded Demoiselle habitat suitability maps differed most according to traditional and social media projections, with traditional and citizen science being the most consistent. We conclude that (i) social media records provide insights into the Banded Demoiselle distribution and habitat preference that are different from, and complementary to, the insights gathered from traditional recording schemes and citizen science initiatives; (ii) predicted habitat suitability maps that ignore information from social media records can substantially underestimate (by over 3500 km 2 in the case of the Banded Demoiselle) potential suitable habitat availability.

First record of Amphisbaena anomala (Squamata: Amphisbaenidae) in lowland Caatinga based on citizen science, with an updated distribution map

“…It is undeniable that citizen science has brought benefits for data collection and by bringing people closer to nature (Forti & Szabo, 2023; O'Neill et al, 2023). However, at least in Brazil, citizen science platforms such as iNaturalist have also been used to share images of species recorded during environmental impact assessments, often without voucher specimens deposited in natural history collections, as the register of A. anomala presented here.…”

Advantages and Drawbacks of Open-Ended, Use-Agnostic Citizen Science Data Collection: A Case Study

“…Recent assessments of iNaturalist data have shown that accurate species identification as well as completeness of contribution was possible to a high degree for some (usually more charismatic) species (Mesaglio et al 2023) and that it improves with screening and training of volunteers (Wittmann, Girman, and Crocker 2019). Data from iNaturalist can be useful to track changes in species distributions, especially when used in combination with museum records and scientific surveys (Gaier and Resasco 2023;O'Neill et al 2023).…”

Using social media records to inform conservation planning

“…Citizen science is playing a vital role in reducing global biodiversity knowledge gaps (Callaghan et al, 2021(Callaghan et al, , 2022Chandler et al, 2017;Di Minin et al, 2015;Pocock et al, 2019), and, even in Europe, around 80−90% of biodiversity observational records are collected by dedicated volunteers (Schmeller et al, 2009). Amateur (and professional) naturalists are increasingly taking advantage of expanded internet coverage and the photographic capacity of mobile devices to share their observations online (Andrachuk et al, 2019;Chowdhury, Aich, et al, 2023;Marcenò et al, 2021;O'Neill et al, 2023). Consequently, the amount of biodiversity data from citizen science in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is sharply increasing, although its data are biased toward Europe and North America (Hughes et al, 2021).…”