The coverage of limitations is great. I also really like how the Fig 11 legend mentions, “Fortunately, 2 dedicated carabidologists corrected hundreds of incorrect identifications after January 2022.” For science!
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I just added a paper I wrote, it reports 3 new naturalized species in Hawaii found with the aide of iNaturalist data.
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I just added the following to the wiki. Probably redundant to the list available through GBIF since it used iNat data from GBIF. But I wanted to highlight it and toot iNat’s horn a bit with it:
Calvente, A., Alves da Silva, A.P., Edler, D., Antunes Carvalho, F., Fantinati, M.R., Zizka, A., and Antonelli, A. (2023) Spiny but photogenic: Amateur sightings complement herbarium specimens to reveal the bioregions of cacti. American Journal of Botany 110(10): e16235. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajb2.16235
The study elucidated Cactaceae bioregions using a GBIF data set containing about 72k specimen records, 168k iNaturalist observations, and 21k other human observations which included…
“mostly science‐based and government data sets, but also less representative, citizen‐based data sets”
Unfortunately the paper is pay-walled, but the excerpt (emphasis added) relevant here is:
automated filtering and manual cleaning resulted in the exclusion of 58% of records and 22% of species names for preserved specimens, 54% of records and 13% of species names for human observations (excluding iNaturalist), and 42% of records and 21% of species names for iNaturalist data (Table 1).
The take-away for me was that, at least in this relatively easily identifiable taxonomic group, iNaturalist records outperformed all other sources including museum specimens for utility in research.
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Which will hopefully help to dispel some of the disparaging things that have been said about iNaturalist in these forums.
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There is a preprint PDF available on BioArxiv: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.15.532806v2
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Acknowledging iNaturalist for data used in distribution maps:
Caković D. & Frajman B. (2023) An integrative approach supports the taxonomic distinction of the Sardo-Corsican endemic Euphorbia semiperfoliata from the widespread E. amygdaloides (Euphorbiaceae), Plant Biosystems - An International Journal Dealing with all Aspects of Plant Biology, 157:5, 958-969, DOI: 10.1080/11263504.2023.2231926
“frajmanb” is active on iNat :)
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I am also going to open a separate topic on this. It is an interesting read.
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An interesting read, indeed. Thanks for posting that link!
Hi, Greetings from Peru. Here is an citizen science article we published about the breeding activity of birds of Lima, Peru.
Díaz A, Quispe-Torres A, Tataje D, Reynoso A, Hein L. (2023). Records of breeding activity in birds of the Lima Metropolitan Area, central coast of Peru, based on citizen science data. Revista del Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales nueva serie, 25(1):97-120.
DOI: 10.22179/REVMACN.25.769
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Welcome to the Forum, Alexis, and congratulations on your research - I added it to the wiki above.
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