eButterfly: Leveraging Massive Online Citizen Science for Butterfly Conservation
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Entomology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
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Vermont Center for Ecostudies, Norwich, VT 05055, USA
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Health Sciences Library, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
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Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA
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Fisheries and Wildlife, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA
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Daniel Smiley Research Center, Mohonk Preserve, New Paltz, NY 12561, USA
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Biology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada
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Insectarium, Montreal Space for Life, Montreal, QC H1X 2B2, Canada
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Institut de Research en Biologie Végétale, Montreal, QC H1X 2B2, Canada
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Jaret C. Daniels
Insects 2017, 8(2), 53; https://doi.org/10.3390/insects8020053
Received: 10 April 2017
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Revised: 5 May 2017
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Accepted: 12 May 2017
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Published: 18 May 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Butterfly Conservation)
Data collection, storage, analysis, visualization, and dissemination are changing rapidly due to advances in new technologies driven by computer science and universal access to the internet. These technologies and web connections place human observers front and center in citizen science-driven research and are critical in generating new discoveries and innovation in such fields as astronomy, biodiversity, and meteorology. Research projects utilizing a citizen science approach address scientific problems at regional, continental, and even global scales otherwise impossible for a single lab or even a small collection of academic researchers. Here we describe eButterfly an integrative checklist-based butterfly monitoring and database web-platform that leverages the skills and knowledge of recreational butterfly enthusiasts to create a globally accessible unified database of butterfly observations across North America. Citizen scientists, conservationists, policy makers, and scientists are using eButterfly data to better understand the biological patterns of butterfly species diversity and how environmental conditions shape these patterns in space and time. eButterfly in collaboration with thousands of butterfly enthusiasts has created a near real-time butterfly data resource producing tens of thousands of observations per year open to all to share and explore.
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Keywords:
biodiversity; butterfly; Citizen Science; crowd-sourced; Danaus plexippus; data management; pollinator conservation; Lepidoptera; Papilionoidea; Vanessa atalanta
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Externally hosted supplementary file 1
Link: https://github.com/jcoliver/ebutterfly-graphing
Description: R code used to generate the figures
MDPI and ACS Style
Prudic, K.L.; McFarland, K.P.; Oliver, J.C.; Hutchinson, R.A.; Long, E.C.; Kerr, J.T.; Larrivée, M. eButterfly: Leveraging Massive Online Citizen Science for Butterfly Conservation. Insects 2017, 8, 53. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects8020053
AMA Style
Prudic KL, McFarland KP, Oliver JC, Hutchinson RA, Long EC, Kerr JT, Larrivée M. eButterfly: Leveraging Massive Online Citizen Science for Butterfly Conservation. Insects. 2017; 8(2):53. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects8020053
Chicago/Turabian StylePrudic, Kathleen L., Kent P. McFarland, Jeffrey C. Oliver, Rebecca A. Hutchinson, Elizabeth C. Long, Jeremy T. Kerr, and Maxim Larrivée. 2017. "eButterfly: Leveraging Massive Online Citizen Science for Butterfly Conservation" Insects 8, no. 2: 53. https://doi.org/10.3390/insects8020053
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