The Maryland Amphibian and Reptile Atlas: A Volunteer-Based Distributional Survey

Abstract

Declines of amphibian and reptile populations are well documented. Yet a lack of understanding of their distribution may hinder conservation planning for these species. The Maryland Amphibian and Reptile Atlas project (MARA) was launched in 2010. This five-year, citizen science project will document the distribution of the 93 amphibian and reptile species in Maryland. During the 2010 and 2011 field seasons, 488 registered MARA volunteers collected 13,919 occurrence records that document 85 of Maryland's amphibian and reptile species, including 19 frog, 20 salamander, five lizard, 25 snake, and 16 turtle species. Thirteen of these species are of conservation concern in Maryland. The MARA will establish a baseline by which future changes in the distribution of populations of native herpetofauna can be assessed as well as provide information for immediate management actions for rare and threatened species. As a citizen science project it has the added benefit of educating citizens about native amphibian and reptile diversity and its ecological benefits—an important step in creating an informed society that actively participates in the long-term conservation of Maryland's nature heritage.

Trade‐offs in moving citizen‐based anuran call surveys online during the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic: Lessons from rural Appalachia, USA

“…Citizen science‐based anuran call surveys have enjoyed widespread use by academic researchers and government agencies for decades (Bishop et al, 1995; Mossman, Hartman, Hay, Sauer, & Dhuey, 1998; Smit, Zuiderwijk, & Groenveld, 1999), leading to advancement in our knowledge of anuran diversity and anuran species’ ecological and evolutionary dynamics. Such datasets, for example, have clarified the local and regional distributions of individual species (Cunningham, Davis, Swarth, & Therres, 2012; Rowley et al., 2019) and informed the broader understanding of conservation concerns for anuran diversity (Cosentino et al., 2014; Westgate et al., 2015). Anuran call surveys and their resulting datasets have also been widely used as a medium for incorporating citizen science into curricula across multiple educational levels, including public (K‐12) schools and undergraduate classrooms (Cosentino et al., 2014; Huffling et al., 2018; Kim, Sung, Park, & Park, 2006).…”

The Role of Citizen Science and Volunteer Data Collection in Zoological Research

“…C. L. Catlin-Groves [7] illustrates many new novel technologies to further engage the public in scientific research (and improve data quality along the way) and H. R. Cunningham et al [8] illustrate the role of citizen science projects in educating the public about some less charismatic species-in this case amphibians and reptiles-as well as the role of these species in general ecology. J.…”