Hello all, I thought you might be interested in this paper I just published, in which I used iNaturalist as a photographic vouchering system for roadkilled insects: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/psyc/8881730 The purpose of the study was to test whether surveying dead insects along a…

I really liked the paper! It’s a nice demonstration of how productive iNat can be for surveying, and an ingenious way to avoid causing additional arthropod mortality. I assumed initially that the “Jersey barriers” separated you from the traffic. I was a little alarmed when I later realized that you…

It’s true that safety is a major concern for this method! It doesn’t seem possible to collect the roadkill without being adjacent to the cars though. The insect debris only accumulates under particular conditions, unfortunately.

Maybe collecting on regular roadside sidewalks with a curb might substantially safer, but I can imagine that the lower traffic volumes and speeds (compared to a highway) might also reduce the collection quantity. Also, requiring paved sidewalks is going to limit a survey mostly to urban and a few su…

Yes, they don’t seem to accumulate on the sidewalks the same way. I tried surveying four other bridges that were also over the river, two of which had sidewalks. Insects only seemed to accumulate where the Jersey barriers were, which were a much more substantial wind barrier than the other fence lik…

What is a vouchering system? My search only brought up stuff about distributing money or school vouchers.

The context in which I see ‘photo voucher’ used on bugguide.net means someone photographs an invertebrate alive (or recently deceased) then dissects/keys/analyzes the genetics to determine the species. Since most entomology is done with dead, prepared specimens, it doesn’t always translate to photos…

I use “vouchering system” more broadly to refer to the way in which a specimen is vouchered, be that with a collection (like a museum) or via photograph. I think iNat can be considered a kind of vouchering system, given it represents a long term image of an organism coinciding with the date/time/loc…

New paper published using iNaturalist as a photographic vouchering system

General

Topic		Replies	Views
iNat used to id rare blue moth and paper published! General	19	1960	July 7, 2023
Too many photos - not enough taxonomy General	45	2787	May 9, 2024
Negative effect of citizen science and inaturalist General	38	4422	September 27, 2019
Why are some taxa so under observed? Nature Talk question	46	2609	November 26, 2020
Non-invasive naturalism: thank you! General	38	2158	November 21, 2021

New paper published using iNaturalist as a photographic vouchering system

Related topics