The people <i>vs</i> science: can passively crowdsourced internet data shed light on host–parasite interactions?

Doherty, Jean‐François; Filion, Antoine; Bennett, Jerusha; Bhattarai, Upendra Raj; Chai, Xuhong; Dutra, Daniela de Angeli; Donlon, Erica; Jorge, Fátima; Milotic, Marin; Park, Eunji; Sabadel, Amandine; Thomas, Leighton J.; Poulin, Robert

doi:10.1017/s0031182021000962

Cited by 14 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(29 reference statements)

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“…The iNaturalist database currently contains over 92 million observations of over 344,300 species from across the globe. 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: 84%

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

Cull

2022

Insects

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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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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 84%

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

Cull

2022

Insects

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“…Secondary data from citizen science are often combined with iEcology or culturomics data sources (Jarić et al., 2020) or museum collections (Box 2). Examples include a dietary study of African snakes (Maritz & Maritz, 2020), arthropod parasitism by hairworms (Doherty et al., 2021) and the distribution of anther‐smut disease in the Caryophyllaceae plant family (Kido & Hood, 2020).…”

Section: Secondary Data Are Slowly Diffusing Into the Scientific Lite...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Overcoming biodiversity blindness: Secondary data in primary citizen science observations

Pernat,

Canavan,

Golivets

et al. 2024

Ecol Sol and Evidence

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In the face of the global biodiversity crisis, collecting comprehensive data and making the best use of existing data are becoming increasingly important to understand patterns and drivers of environmental and biological phenomena at different scales. Here we address the concept of secondary data, which refers to additional information unintentionally captured in species records, especially in multimedia‐based citizen science reports. We argue that secondary data can provide a wealth of ecologically relevant information, the utilisation of which can enhance our understanding of traits and interactions among individual organisms, populations and biodiversity dynamics in general. We explore the possibilities offered by secondary data and describe their main types and sources. An overview of research in this field provides a synthesis of the results already achieved using secondary data and different approaches to information extraction. Finally, we discuss challenges to the widespread use of secondary data, such as biases, licensing issues, use of metadata and lack of awareness of this trove of data due to a missing common terminology, as well as possible solutions to overcome these barriers. Although the exploration and use of secondary data is only emerging, the many opportunities identified show how these data can enrich biodiversity research and monitoring.

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“…There are also other approaches which make use of existing resources from which ecological interactions can be sampled, such as image repositories (i.e. Google images or iNaturalist; Doherty et al, 2021) and text scraping from web pages (Jarić et al, 2020).…”

Section: G Lobal Ecolog Ic Al Ne T Work Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Using ecological networks to answer questions in global biogeography and ecology

Windsor

Hoogen

Crowther

et al. 2022

Journal of Biogeography

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Ecological networks have classically been studied at site and landscape scales, yet recent efforts have been made to collate these data into global repositories. This offers an opportunity to integrate and upscale knowledge about ecological interactions from local to global scales to gain enhanced insights from the mechanistic information provided by these data. By drawing on existing research investigating patterns in ecological interactions at continental to global scales, we show how data on ecological networks, collected at appropriate scales, can be used to generate an improved understanding of many aspects of ecology and biogeography-for example, species distribution modelling, restoration ecology and conservation. We argue that by understanding the patterns in the structure and function of ecological networks across scales, it is possible to enhance our understanding of the natural world.

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The people vs science: can passively crowdsourced internet data shed light on host–parasite interactions?

Abstract: Abstract

Cited by 14 publications

References 23 publications

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

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

Overcoming biodiversity blindness: Secondary data in primary citizen science observations

Using ecological networks to answer questions in global biogeography and ecology

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