Potential for online crowdsourced biological recording data to complement surveillance for arthropod vectors

Cull, Benjamin

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0250382

Cited by 9 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 103 publications

(140 reference statements)

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“…Even more rapid tick encounter information can be provided by online platforms with real time reporting. Such online platforms have shown great success in accomplishing this task in other countries [ 87 , 88 ] and, in Canada, eTick [ 89 ] is a dedicated online platform that allows the public to access tick recoveries in real-time.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monitoring Risk: Tick and Borrelia burgdorferi Public Participatory Surveillance in the Canadian Maritimes, 2012–2020

et al. 2021

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Ticks are vectors of many diseases, including Lyme disease (Ld). Lyme disease is an emerging disease in Canada caused by infection with the Lyme borreliosis (Lb) members of the Borrelia genus of spirochaete bacteria, of which Borrelia burgdorferi is regionally the most prevalent. The primary tick vector in central and eastern Canada, Ixodes scapularis, is increasing in numbers and in the geographical extent of established populations. This study documents the distribution of ticks recovered by passive surveillance, and their B. burgdorferi infection prevalence, in three Canadian Maritime provinces from 2012–2020. These regions represent areas in which tick populations are widely established, establishing, and considered non-established. Using a community science approach by partnering with veterinarians and members of the public, we collected over 7000 ticks from the 3 provinces. The three species found most often on companion animals and humans were I. scapularis (76.9%), Ixodes cookei (10.4%) and Dermacentor variabilis (8.9%). The most common hosts were dogs (60.5%), cats (16.8%) and humans (17.6%). As is typical of passive surveillance tick collections, the majority of ticks recovered were adult females; for I. scapularis 90.2%, 5.3%, 3.9% and 0.6% of the total of 5630 ticks recovered for this species were adult females, adult males, nymphs and larvae, respectively. The majority of B. burgdorferi-infected ticks were I. scapularis, as expected. Borrelia infection prevalence in I scapularis was higher in Nova Scotia (20.9%), the province with the most endemic regions, than New Brunswick (14.1%) and Prince Edward Island (9.1%), provinces thought to have established and non-established tick populations, respectively. The province-wide Borrelia infection prevalence generally increased in these latter tow provinces over the course of the study. The host did not have a significant effect on B. burgdorferi infection prevalence; I. scapularis ticks from dogs, cats, humans was, 13.3% (n = 3622), 15.6% (n = 817), 17.9% (n = 730), respectively. No I. scapularis larvae were found infected (n = 33) but B. burgdorferi was detected in 14.8% of both adults (n = 5140) and nymphs (n = 215). The incidence of B. burgdorferi infection also did not differ by engorgement status 15.0% (n = 367), 15.1% (n = 3101) and 14.4% (n = 1958) of non-engorged, engorged and highly engorged ticks, respectively, were infected. In New Brunswick, at the advancing front of tick population establishment, the province-wide infection percentages generally increased over the nine-year study period and all health district regions showed increased tick recoveries and a trend of increased percentages of Borrelia-infected ticks over the course of the study. Within New Brunswick, tick recoveries but not Borrelia infection prevalence were significantly different from endemic and non-endemic regions, suggesting cryptic endemic regions existed prior to their designation as a risk area. Over the 9 years of the study, tick recoveries increased in New Brunswick, the primary study region, and I. scapularis recoveries spread northwards and along the coast, most but not all new sites of recoveries were predicted by climate-based models, indicating that ongoing tick surveillance is necessary to accurately detect all areas of risk. Comparison of tick recoveries and public health risk areas indicates a lag in identification of risk areas. Accurate and timely information on tick distribution and the incidence of Borrelia and other infections are essential for keeping the public informed of risk and to support disease prevention behaviors.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monitoring Risk: Tick and Borrelia burgdorferi Public Participatory Surveillance in the Canadian Maritimes, 2012–2020

et al. 2021

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“…Difficulties associated with locating, observing, and collecting spider specimens partly account for the deficit of data on species ranges and diversity, and the lack of information on habitat and behavior (Cardoso, Erwin, Borges, & New, 2011). Community science initiatives (projects that partner researchers with community volunteers) help researchers expand arachnid research while also providing public outreach and education (Cull, 2021).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A pipeline for assessing the quality of images and metadata from crowd-sourced databases

Billotte

2022

Preprint

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Crowd-sourced biodiversity databases provide easy access to data and images for ecological education and research. One concern with using publicly sourced databases; however, is the quality of their images, taxonomic descriptions, and geographical metadata. To address this concern and allow researchers and educators to make informed decisions about using crowd-sourced data, I developed a suite of pipelines to evaluate taxonomic consistency, how well geo-tagging fits known distributions, and image quality of crowd-sourced biodiversity data of the order Araneae (spiders) from iNaturalist. This pipeline allows users to analyze multiple images from iNaturalist and their associated metadata; to determine the level of taxonomic identification (family, genera, species) for each occurrence; whether the taxonomy label for an image matches accepted nesting of families, genera, and species; and whether geo-tags match the distribution of the taxon described using occurrence data from the Global Biodiversity Infrastructure Facility (GBIF) as a reference. Additionally, I assessed image quality with the MatLab algorithm, BRISQUE. I used entries from the order Araneae (spiders) as a case study. At the time of my analyses (July 2021), I found that iNaturalist contained at least one observation for 124 of the 129 families of Araneae, and 115 families had three or more unique observations, with relatively similar quality of metadata and image quality across families. Taxonomic consistency was similar for observations identified at the genus and species level, but lower in observations with only family level identification. Observations with species level identifications had higher precision for geo-tags compared to those identified to the family or genus level and the highest image quality according to the BRISQUE scores. Overall, the results suggest that iNaturalist can provide large metadata and images sets for research. Given the inevitability of some low-quality observations, this pipeline provides a valuable resource for researchers and educators to evaluate the quality of iNaturalist and other crowd-sourced data.

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“…An additional image-based approach that has shown potential to complement other tick surveillance strategies is the examination of tick images submitted to online wildlife databases such as iNaturalist [ 59 ]. The iNaturalist platform hosts a growing community of naturalists who submit primarily image-based wildlife observations via the iNaturalist smartphone app or website, where they can be identified by members of the community.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This valuable resource is being increasingly used in scientific research, and these studies demonstrate consistent results between community- and scientist-collected data [ 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 ]. A previous analysis found that iNaturalist data concerning important tick and mosquito vectors correlated well with known geographical distributions and seasonality of these species [ 59 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monitoring Trends in Distribution and Seasonality of Medically Important Ticks in North America Using Online Crowdsourced Records from iNaturalist

Cull

2022

Insects

Self Cite

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Recent increases in the incidence and geographic range of tick-borne diseases in North America are linked to the range expansion of medically important tick species, including Ixodes scapularis, Amblyomma americanum, and Amblyomma maculatum. Passive tick surveillance programs have been highly successful in collecting information on tick distribution, seasonality, host-biting activity, and pathogen infection prevalence. These have demonstrated the power of citizen or community science participation to collect country-wide, epidemiologically relevant data in a resource-efficient manner. This study examined tick observations from the online image-based biological recording platform iNaturalist to evaluate its use as an effective tool for monitoring the distributions of A. americanum, A. maculatum, I. scapularis, and Dermacentor in the United States and Canada. The distribution and seasonality of iNaturalist tick observations were found to accurately represent those of the studied species. County-level iNaturalist tick occurrence data showed good agreement with other data sources in documented areas of I. scapularis and A. americanum establishment, and highlighted numerous previously unreported counties with iNaturalist observations of these species. This study supports the use of iNaturalist data as a highly cost-effective passive tick surveillance method that can complement existing surveillance strategies to update tick distributions and identify new areas of tick establishment.

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Potential for online crowdsourced biological recording data to complement surveillance for arthropod vectors

Cited by 9 publications

References 103 publications

Monitoring Risk: Tick and Borrelia burgdorferi Public Participatory Surveillance in the Canadian Maritimes, 2012–2020

Monitoring Risk: Tick and Borrelia burgdorferi Public Participatory Surveillance in the Canadian Maritimes, 2012–2020

A pipeline for assessing the quality of images and metadata from crowd-sourced databases

Monitoring Trends in Distribution and Seasonality of Medically Important Ticks in North America Using Online Crowdsourced Records from iNaturalist

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