Biases and more biases – a comparison of two citizen science platforms used for collecting records of Odonata in Italy 00

Abstract

As human activities increasingly threaten biodiversity, scientists require new strategies and approaches to face the growing need for information to guide environmental management, conservation planning, and policy development. However, assessing global shifts in the distribution and diversity of living organisms requires extensive datasets, with collaborative efforts involving thousands of individuals. Most insect observations come from unstructured and opportunistic citizen science (CS) sources that merely associate a taxonomic entity with a specific time and location and consequently, these data are prone to many biases. In our research, we investigated two CS platforms, Ornitho.it and iNaturalist, which are utilized for recording species presences, but which pose different constraints and which have different user bases. We assessed how the difficulty of photographing Odonata species influences their recording frequency and the potential over- or under-representation of species of these platforms, analysing each within its specific limitations. Our results reveal a complex interaction of species (and family) characteristics, such as size, difficulty to photograph, behaviour, and habitat preferences, which significantly influence the likelihood of a species being recorded. Although the two platforms showed a general agreement between their relative numbers of observations of the various species, every record on either platform is subject to numerous biases at different levels (e.g., site selection, taxonomic interest, species detectability). Despite the numerous biases, CS records offer valuable distribution data and today are a crucial resource for advancing biodiversity research and conservation initiatives.

Keywords. Biodiversity monitoring, biological records, community science, damselflies, dragonflies, iNaturalist, Ornitho.it

Issue section: Original Article