Species monitoring programs in Europe and North America often use unspecialized local collaborators to monitor species throughout countries. This seems extremely hard to do in the Neotropics where the large species diversity almost forbids this approach. Butterflies, for instance, is a group that has benefited much from this approach in both continents. Can we do it in megadiverse countries?
Hi Onildo,
I see several possibilities to recruit local people in species monitoring. The most basic one is simply to collect casual observations. You can do many valuable things with this type of data and it's easy for people to join. However, an approach that collects information on observer effort and zero-observations has much more potential and power. You could do this in various ways, like for example:
1) Follow one or very few target species like a rare raptor
2) Follow a group of species like parrots
3) Follow all species
A survey method that is very successful in many countries are point counts. These could be extended with line transects or polygon surveys. In surveys that follow only one species is it advisable not only to record the presence of the species, but also information on reproduction.
Observations and surveys could be entered in web-based systems like ebird.org (only for birds) or observado.org (all species groups).
Cheers,
Henk
Hi Henk,
I personally have some difficulty in dealing with casual (anecdotal) observations. These observations are a presence-only data, as one cannot assess species absence, population trends or gaps of occurrence based on such data. Anyways, the more people is involved in this kind of voluntary program, the better the quality of the data. In little sampled areas like the Amazon region these may be the only data available and will surely help.
Thanks for your thoughts about this major task of biodiversity monitoring in the tropical region.
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