Utilization of photographs taken by citizens for estimating bumblebee distributions

Abstract

Citizen science is a powerful tool for collecting large volumes of observational data on various species. These data are used to estimate distributions using environmental factors with Species Distribution Models (SDM). However, if citizens are inexperienced in recognizing organisms, they may report different species as the subject species. Here we show nation-wide bumblebee distributions using photographs taken by citizens in our project, and estimated distributions for six bumblebee species using land use, climate, and altitude data with SDM. We identified species from photographic images, and took their locations from GPS data of photographs or the text in e-mails. When we compared our data with conventional data for specimens in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), we found that the volume and the number of species were larger, and the bias of spatial range was lower, than those of GBIF. Our estimated distributions were more consistent with bumblebee distributions reported in previous studies than with those of GBIF. Our method was effective for collecting distribution data, and estimating distributions with SDM. The estimated SDM allows us to predict the previous and future species distributions, and to develop conservation policies taking account of future city planning and/or global climate changes.

Mapping species distributions in 2 weeks using citizen science

“…Indeed, in this study a single week of nationwide citizen science sampling generated data with spatial coverage equivalent to more than four decades of expert recording from the UK's current ‘gold standard’ wasp recording scheme. In this, the BWS is not alone; a Japanese citizen science study of bee distribution also performed better than models created with records from the Global Biodiversity Information Faculty (Suzuki‐Ohno et al ., ).…”

“…Indeed, in this study a single week of nationwide citizen science sampling generated data with spatial coverage equivalent to more than four decades of expert recording from the UK's current 'gold standard' wasp recording scheme. In this, the BWS is not alone; a Japanese citizen science study of bee distribution also performed better than models created with records from the Global Biodiversity Information Faculty (Suzuki-Ohno et al, 2017). Critical to this success, BWS data were collected using a standardised method that took advantage of the ubiquity and enthusiasm of the public even for uncharismatic species like wasps, resulting in large sample sizes and high geographical coverage. Moreover, identification to species level, always a potential weak link in citizen science projects, was undertaken by experts.…”

The bumblebee Bombus ardens ardens (Hymenoptera: Apidae) is the most important pollinator of Oriental persimmon, Diospyros kaki (Ericales: Ebenaceae), in Hiroshima, Japan

“…The question arises as to whether B. ardens ardens is also a pollinator of D. kaki in other regions. This bumblebee is distributed almost throughout Japan, except Hokkaido, which is inhabited by another subspecies, Bombus ardens sakagamii Tkalců (Hymenoptera: Apidae), and the Okinawa Islands (Tadauchi and Murao 2014;Suzuki-Ohno et al 2017). Some studies have reported that B. ardens ardens relies on tree flowers rather than herbaceous ones (Osada et al 2003;Ushimaru et al 2008).…”

Perspectives on biodiversity informatics for ecology

“…For these studies, we used threatened plant distribution data collected by the Japanese Ministry of Environment to establish a national red list (https://ikilog.biodic.go.jp/Rdb/booklist). In the 2010s, the number of macroecological studies (based on integrated reusable data) covering the entire Japanese archipelago increased dramatically (Amano et al, ; Kadoya & Washitani, ; Naoe et al, ; Saito, Kurashima, & Ito, ; Suzuki‐Ohno, Yokoyama, Nakashizuka, & Kawata, ; Yoshioka, Fukasawa, Mishima, Sasaki, & Kadoya, ).…”

“…Recently, citizen science approaches (e.g., field observations by members of the public) have generated increasing interest in ecology and biodiversity sciences (Kobori et al, 2016;Osawa, Yamanaka, et al, 2017). One important research benefit provided by citizen science is the crowdsourcing of large datasets (Osawa, 2015;Osawa, Yamanaka, et al, 2017;Suzuki-Ohno et al, 2017). Suzuki-Ohno et al (2017) estimated the potential distribution ranges of six bumblebees based on photographs taken by citizens throughout Japan.…”