Crowdsourcing fungal biodiversity: revision of iNaturalist observations in Northwestern Siberia

• Published in: Nature Conservation Research
• Main Authors: Nina V. Filippova, Dmitry V. Ageev, Yuriy M. Basov, Viktoria V. Bilous, Dmitry A. Bochkov, Sergey Yu. Bolshakov, Galina N. Bushmakova, Elena A. Butunina, Evgeny A. Davydov, Alexandra Yu. Esengeldenova, Ilya V. Filippov, Alexandra V. Filippova, Sergei V. Gerasimov, Lyudmila B. Kalinina, Juha Kinnunen, Alexander A. Korepanov, Natalia N. Korotkikh, Igor V. Kuzmin, Sergey V. Kvashnin, Alexandra I. Mingalimova, Nikolay V. Nakonechnyi, Ruslan N. Nurkhanov, Evgeniy S. Popov, Kim O. Potapov, Yury A. Rebriev, Anton S. Rezvyi, Sofia R. Romanova, Tatiana L. Strus, Carl Sundström, Tatiana Yu. Svetasheva, Massimo Tabone, Svetlana G. Tsarakhova, Alexandra L. Vasina, Anastasia V. Vlasenko, Vyacheslav A. Vlasenko, Lidia S. Yakovchenko, Alexander A. Yakovlev, Elena A. Zvyagina
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English; Russian
• Published: Fund for Support and Development of Protected Areas "Bear Land" 2022
• Subjects: biodiversity data mobilisation; citizen science; fungal conservation; fungi; human observation; lichens; mycological society; new record; protected species; red data book; Geography. Anthropology. Recreation; G; khanty; khanty-mansi; Mansi; Siberia
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.24189/ncr.2022.023; https://doaj.org/article/f1f0e47cd7014f10b92581f1978d6d9e

The paper presents the first analysis of crowdsourcing data of all observations of fungi (including lichens) and myxomycetes in Northwestern Siberia uploaded to iNaturalist.org to date (24.02.2022). The Introduction presents an analysis of fungal diversity crowdsourcing globally, in Russia, and in the region of interest. Materials and methods describe the protocol of uploading data to iNaturalist.org, the structure of the crowdsourcing community, initiative to revise the accumulated data, procedures of data analysis, and compilation of a dataset of revised crowdsourced data. The Results present the analysis of accumulated data by several parameters: temporal, geographical and taxonomical scope, observation and identification efforts, identifiability of various taxa, species novelty and Red Data Book categories and the protection status of registered observations. The Discussion provides data on usability of crowdsourcing data for biodiversity research and conservation of fungi, including pros and contras. The Electronic Supplements to the paper include an annotated checklist of observations of protected species with information on Red Data Book categories and the protection status, and an annotated checklist of regional records of new taxa. The paper is supplemented with a dataset of about 15 000 revised and annotated records available through Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The tradition of crowdsourcing is rooted in mycological societies around the world, including Russia. In Northwestern Siberia, a regional mycological club was established in 2018, encouraging its members to contribute observations of fungi on iNaturalist.org. A total of about 15 000 observations of fungi and myxomycetes were uploaded so far, by about 200 observers, from three administrative regions (Yamalo-Nenetsky Autonomous Okrug, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, and Tyumen Region). The geographical coverage of crowdsourcing observations remains low. However, the observation activity has increased in the last four years. The ...