Hi Siddharth:

It depends on which group of fauna you are working. For instance for large mammals and birds, good photographas help a lot and contribute with information on distribution for species, but  If you are working with small arthropods like insects the identifications made on social networks are unreliable because they are opinions from many different people. In small arthropods such as photos alone are not sufficient to identify to species level. They need to be examined by a specialist, do dissections of their genitalia and study other morphological characters not seen in photorgraphs. If you have sibling species for instance it is necessary to do DNA analysis.

Regards,

Luis Miguel

Hi Siddharth,

I believe that the encyclopedy of life, EOL, started by E.O.Wilson and many selected co-workers, dedicating one web site for each species on Earth, will finally help to understand and account the number of species, as mis-identifications and double identifications will be eliminated. If we consider that up to now, new species have been described in so many languages (not read by all of the taxonomists), there is a very vast work going on. All other methods or sites might introduce more confusion (specially among the arthropods) than clarify.

Hi Siddharth,

I would like to argue, photographs posted on Social Networking Sites create leads to explore distribution of taxa under study. There are lot of discoveries in terms of range extensions or even new species descriptions through the accidental captures of photographs of citizen scientists.

I feel the confusion will be created by Scientists, if they start believing the Citizen Scientist records as confirmed sightings, rather than confirming the data  themselves. These is whole other issue of mis-identifications in reputed collections due to lack of curatorial inputs. i.e. what is the proportion of ids that are confirmed with say genitalia dissections in museums?

So my short answer is Citizen's scientist contributions are extremely important for biodiversity scientists to generate useful leads to explore more. We should always remember the Citizen's scientists have much wider reach and what scientists can do and collection is not possible in several taxa, due to restrictions of permits.

Regards,

Vijay

Hello Vijay,

you are partly right: indeed "the confusion will be created by Scientists, if they start believing the Citizen Scientist records as confirmed sightings". But the expectation that scientists will search among Facebooks &c. looking for what somebody thinks to have seen or photographed, and run to confirm is, to say the least, not realistic - the less so that no confirmation (or falsification) would usually be possible: can we ask the respective beetle or even snail "please, wait here for some days until a scientist comes and confirms the identification"? You are right also in that "mis-identifications in reputed collections" are very frequent, but there are specimens whose identifications can - and should before publication! - be verified, what (as Luis justly remarked) is typically not possible for observations (or even photographs) made by non-specialists without voucher-specimens. By the way, I do not really understand whom you have in mind writing about "Citizen Scientists" - if they are scientists, i.e. persons trained in particular branch of science and interested in research, they should themselves publish their observations in scientific papers (not on Facebook...) with necessary documentation and discussion; if they are not, their observations - with rare exceptions concerning very characteristic, "unmistakable" species - should not be taken into serious consideration by scientists...

Hello Roman,

I do agree with your views as a taxonomic perspective. But an ecologist perspective may be different. (Disclaimer: I am neither)

By Citizen Scientist I am going by standard definition [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_science] that is Citizen who are willing to help in Science. So if I am interested in contributing to the biodiversity knowledge, I take photographs and post them on say Flickr with Date, Place and what I think the id is. If that is not the correct id, my peer scientists and citizen scientist correct me. In many cases the ids are good. And Biodiversity scientist use this data all the time. [more than 60% of GBIF data is observations]

It may not be feasible for a Computer Scientist to publish an interesting anecdotal sighting of an butterfly into an scientific paper, but certainly useful to publish the data on a portal like iNaturalist. 

You are absolutely right "their observations ... should not be taken into serious consideration by scientists..." by a taxonomist, but for an biodiversity scientist, that might be an extremely interesting lead is my only point. And that is the sole reason I am in favor of strongly supporting the Citizen Science efforts. The question being contribution to Biodiversity science and NOT taxonomy.

Sorry, I do not understand... Is ecology or "biodiversity science" (do you mean biogeography? or what?) a kind of pseudoscience based on anecdotal pseudodata??? If the identification can be verified, it is (after verification) as valuable for taxonomy as it is for ecology or any other field of biology; if it is not verifiable, it is as worthless for one branch of science as it is for any other - data are either reliable or not, irrespectively of who would like to use them!

Thank you all for answering. 

Please correct me if I am concluding wrongly from above answers-

Observations on social networking websites can help in identification, mapping distribution for members of well-studied groups like mammals, birds. However, they cannot serve same purpose for most invertebrates, due to lack of sampling and a large proportion being undescribed yet. For most invertebrates, concluding to species level identification based on a photograph (without specimen) would be a mistake. However, it can be of help scientist to know if it is something interesting and need to be studied; the locality details with the photograph will help. 

For a particular ecological study, if ids suffice to a family or genus level, the observational data can be of help. For example, if it deals with Giant wood spiders which are large in size, can be identified based on photograph, thanks to a strong base-line literature for the genus Nephila. Here, however quality of photograph (diagnostic character visible?) will be an important factor to consider.  

Regarding Carola's point- Cataloguing taxonomic data, distributional data, known ecological information and other studies for a species, compiled through publications on a single platform will be of great use.  

Hello Roman,

I simply mean two general remarks: First is that not all scientists may bothered by precise taxonomic identity of each and every record in the data set, depending on the application and second some of them might use the curious leads generated by citizen's scientists to explore and collect in respective regions for verification of new records.

Regards,

Vijay

Hello Sidhharth

Yes your concluding summery sounds very reasonable to me. i.e. for most Indian butterfly species we can confirm ids with decent UP and UN photographs, but certain genus or sub families, we do not attempt that.

Regards,

Vijay

"not all scientists may bothered by precise taxonomic identity of each and every record in the data set" - yes, unfortunately some do not...

Siddharth, I liked to see the issue raised here in the form of an open question to RG members. There was a hint of prejudice in the original statement that made me feel a little uncomfortable with the way it was phrased, but you were successful to evoke several replies, including mine below.

I believe the general conclusion you recently assumed is leading to a disregard to the real contribution of the so called "citizen scientists". That is why I'd like to explore a little more this subject in order to prevent the propagation of a false consensus that citizen science is not welcome.

The term 'citizen science' has been much used recently, and this is undoubtedly causing a strong reaction in the scientific community with this sudden promotion of common citizens to the realm of scientists. I understand that this may be a delicate point to discuss and will leave it to a proper forum.

Although this term has been applied only recently, this is in fact something that is going on since immemorial times. Common citizens have always contributed to the scientific knowledge either by haphazard anecdotal samplings of animals and plants or photographies, as seems to be the case of the present discussion, or from the adoption of standardized methods that allows anyone to contribute to the scientific knowledge of the natural world.

There are several biological sampling networks which already added tens of thousands records of animal and plant species in many countries (check EOL, Map of Life, iNaturalist, eBird, PlantNet, Urubu, SISS-Geo to name a few data collection tools). Anecdotal observations may have a limited, although important, contribution to the knowledge of biodiversity, as sometimes these may provide novel data on species occurrence. New localities of occurrence of several species have come to light from pictures posted by citizens at Flickr, Facebook, Instagram and other social networks.

Common citizens that volunteered to aid in institutional efforts of biodiversity monitoring have been contributing a lot of data in many countries for the past several decades. In the UK and other countries in continental Europe, there are thousands of people sampling butterflies applying a simple and efficient method (Pollard walks). These citizen science data contributed to the detailed knowledge of the distribution and population trends of species across Europe. Butterfly Conservation, a UK-based NGO, relies on thousands of citizen volunteers to gather population data since the 1970's. Loads of papers have been published using these data.

The bottleneck of this process is that all inputs from citizens have to pass through a validation process to accredit the information. Also, most of these data come from low biodiversity temperate countries, a feature that makes the job much easier. The situation is much more difficult to deal with in tropical countries.

In high diversity tropical countries this task is inherently much harder. Large biodiversity coupled with a deficit in taxonomists for most of the invertebrate groups pose a difficult scenario to work with. This is exactly where citizens are most welcome, as they can contribute to a stronger working force and a better geographic coverage. They can also support sampling programs, raise awareness for the low knowledge of biodiversity, and broadcast the need to protect species in face of the environmental impacts.

As this answer is already long, I wish to conclude with a final thought.

The real challenge is how to make use of the citizen's will to collaborate to gather better data that aids in enhanced knowledge and better management of biodiversity. Mobile phone apps and social networks may contribute to this, but scientists (mostly taxonomists and taxonomy-trained researchers) must join the process to support and accredit the information.

"Common citizens have always contributed to the scientific knowledge either by haphazard anecdotal samplings of animals and plants or photographies, as seems to be the case of the present discussion, or from the adoption of standardized methods that allows anyone to contribute to the scientific knowledge of the natural world."

True - but only after clarification of some questions. First: I do not know what do you mean by "samplings" - a collected specimen can, of course, be highly useful and important, great part (perhaps majority) of collections of even the greatest museums consist of specimens collected by non-specialists.  Second: as I wrote earlier, if the "Citizen Scientists" are "persons trained in particular branch of science and interested in research" so that they are able and willing to properly apply "standardized methods", of course their observations may be as valuable as those of professional scientists. But for those specimens and/or observations to "contribute to the scientific knowledge", they must be transferred to appropriate scientists who will verify, elaborate and publish them, i.e. to be sent to a proper institution (natural history museum, scientific society &c.) or person (a scientists working on the group or project in question), not to some Facebook or other such tittle-tattle "social network". This is e.g. a normal practice among ornithologists: observations of rare species are mainly done by "amateurs", but any unusual observation, to be considered as contribution to science, has to be sent (with proper documentation) to national faunistic commission for evaluation and eventual approval. I am entomologist working with beetles (Buprestidae - "jewel beetles" - of S- and E- Asia and Oceania) and would be very much interested in cooperation of some native collectors (photographs, as explained earlier, are typically not reliably interpretable), but do not expect me to search through Facebooks or similar for information like that XY believes to have seen Ixus ypsilonius here or there!

Dear Onildo,

Thanks for your detailed reply with examples. 

It is proving helpful to understand several aspects of the  contribution of observations on social networking webs from different answers. I have tried re-phrasing the question. 

As mentioned, I agree with the importance of citizen scientists' contribution proven and its potential. I wished to know how it contributes to understudied taxa. 

I would add that some sort of training by scientists for 'what to image in a particular taxon' will help more in documenting. This is very essential in regions and groups (mainly understudied taxa) with high diversity. 

The validation process would still require sampling in some cases. Clearly, this process is a Herculean task and a batch of experts will be necessary to guide in doing this for different taxa.  

Not sure whether this is already in practice– a real-time interface contacting an expert (or team of experts) who can respond whether or not to sample a particular invertebrate (specimen) which would benefit specimen study (morphology, molecular) and also prevent massive collection, when not necessary.

Regards,

Siddharth.

Thanks, Siddharth for your sense of the problem I mentioned in the question. It's much better now.

Regarding citizen contributions to science, I see a few paths that may be profitable for real scientists to work more effectively with citizens.

1) Training of volunteers to photograph and collect specimens and associated data in projects led by scientific institutions;

2) Produce field guides and support material to aid citizens do a better job;

3) Develop better software (e.g. mobile phone apps) to be used by citizens to record and screen observations;

4) Build network of scientists and experienced observers to help inexperienced citizens ID observations. This could take the form of concentric circles leading from the least experienced citizens to more and more experienced researchers up to taxon specialists to make use of a network of people with different levels of expertise one harnessing the other.

Recently this neat paper was published:

A hidden pygmy devil from the Philippines: Arulenus miae sp. nov.—a new species serendipitously discovered in an amateur Facebook post (Tetrigidae: Discotettiginae)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291351065_A_hidden_pygmy_devil_from_the_Philippines_Arulenus_miae_sp_nov-a_new_species_serendipitously_discovered_in_an_amateur_Facebook_post_Tetrigidae_Discotettiginae

Article A hidden pygmy devil from the Philippines: Arulenus miae sp....

This is another case of a new species of plant in Brazil discoverd by a scientis in Facebook :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/science-sushi/2015/08/03/scientists-discover-new-species-of-sundew-on-facebook/#.VroYDvkrKUk

Hi, we have a closed group on facebook, named ''insects of Greece and Cyprus'', where I'm a moderator. We are about 1600 members at the moment. Photos of various insects from many different localities of Greece and Cyprus are being uploaded in the group daily. Me and some other very good and known entomologists and taxonomists there, offer identifications on a daily basis. You can't imagine how interesting, important, and in many cases new to the science information has been revealed in this group!! I will give you some examples: Last year, a member in the group, posted a photo of a Dorcadion beetle from Lesvos island (he lives there), asking for ID to species level. I identified it correctly publicly there as male of Dorcadion (Maculatodorcation) triste, and I pointed out that this is the first record of this species for Europe (you can see the original photo and discussion if you join the group)!!! Lesvos island is very close to Turkey, from where the species was only known (endemic) till now. Another example, a known entomologist and taxonomist from Cyprus uploaded a photo of a Cryptorhynchinae Curculionid recorded for sure for the first time in Cyprus, which it must be also new to science (specialists in the family who are in the facebook group seem to agree to this)..! Also, some very interesting records of rare species (correctly identified by experienced entomologists in the group - yes in many cases correct ID to species level is not possible without the specimen under stereoscope or genitalia preparation and examination there, but in many other it is possible to be done from clear photos by the experienced specialist), from new localities (unknown from there till now / not included localities in any scientific publication in the country distribution of these species) have been known from original photos of specimens taken and uploaded by group members..