Citizen Science as a Tool for Augmenting Museum Collection Data from Urban Areas
Citizen Science as a Tool for Augmenting Museum Collection Data from Urban Areas
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DOI：
10.3389/fevo.2017.00086
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发表时间：
2017-07-28
影响因子：
3
通讯作者：
Kaiser, Kristine
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Spear, Dakota M.;Pauly, Gregory B.;Kaiser, Kristine
博物馆藏品对当代生物学研究至关重要，但近几十年来，博物馆的收藏量有所下降，阻碍了研究人员利用藏品评估物种对栖息地改变、城市化和全球气候变化的反应的能力。公民科学可能是一个关键的方法，以支持博物馆收藏数据，特别是从城市地区，持续的数据收集是至关重要的，我们的理解生态系统动态的高度修改和可变的景观。在这项研究中，我们将作为公民科学项目南加州爬行动物和两栖动物（RASCals）的一部分收集的数据（托管在iNaturalist平台（www.example.com）www.inaturalist.org）与VertNet数据库（www.example.com）中的数据www.vertnet.org进行比较，该数据库包含来自250多个自然历史收藏的数百万条博物馆收藏记录，涉及四个重点物种，包括一种随着城市化而减少的受保护的本土蜥蜴，一种在城市地区广泛分布的本土蜥蜴，和两种水生入侵物种我们比较了VertNet记录的数量与现代RASCals记录的数量，以及从两个数据库中收集的城市，郊区和保护区的记录数量。对于所有物种来说，公民科学记录的生成速度比博物馆记录快得多。对于我们的四个焦点物种中的三个，RASCals参与者在27个月内记录的记录比1990年后添加到VertNet数据库的记录多70%到750%。对于城市宽容的南方鳄鱼蜥蜴，RASCals参与者收集的现代城市记录比VertNet数据库中包含的记录多近45倍。对于所有其他物种，大多数RASCals记录都是在郊区或其他高度改造的景观中收集的，这表明了公民科学在城市和郊区生态系统中收集数据的价值。随着新博物馆的收购减少，像RASCals这样的公民科学项目可能对维护现代物种分布数据至关重要。
Museum collections are critical to contemporary biological research, but museum acquisitions have declined in recent decades, hampering researchers' ability to use collections to assess species responses to habitat modification, urbanization, and global climate change. Citizen science may be a key method to bolster museum collections data, particularly from urban regions, where ongoing data collection is critical to our understanding of ecosystem dynamics in a highly modified and variable landscape. In this study, we compare data collected as part of the citizen-science project Reptiles and Amphibians of Southern California (RASCals), hosted on the platform iNaturalist (www.inaturalist.org), to data in the VertNet database (www.vertnet.org), which houses millions of museum collection records from over 250 natural-history collections, for four focal species, including a native lizard of conservation concern that has declined with urbanization, a native lizard that is widespread in urban areas, and two invasive aquatic species. We compared numbers of VertNet records over time to modern RASCals records, and the number of records collected from urban, suburban, and protected areas from both databases. For all species, citizen-science records were generated much more rapidly than museum records. For three of our four focal species, RASCals participants over 27 months documented from 70 to 750% more records than were added to the VertNet database after 1990. For the urban-tolerant southern alligator lizard, RASCals participants collected nearly 45 times more modern urban records than are contained in the VertNet database. For all other species, the majority of RASCals records were collected within suburban or other highly modified landscapes, demonstrating the value of citizen science for collecting data within urban and suburban ecosystems. As new museum acquisitions decline, citizen-science projects like RASCals may become critical to the maintenance of modern species-distribution data.