Comparing different citizen science platforms for collecting urban ecological data from Toco toucan (Ramphastos toco) in Argentina

Abstract

Citizen science projects are valuable tools since they provide substantial amounts of data on different animal species. Currently, there are a wide variety of platforms and objectives for diverse citizen science projects. Despite these advances, the approaches and contributions of citizen science platforms for collecting data on a particular species, and in a specific site or region, have been poorly explored. Thus, in this article, we compare the number of participants and the amount of data collected by three platforms on the Toco toucan (Ramphastos toco) in San Salvador de Jujuy city, located in northwestern Argentina. This particular bird species is very charismatic and frequents urban areas all year round; so that, it is interesting to know what contributions (e.g. participant numbers, ecological and distribution data) are being made about this species on citizen science platforms. Thus, we examined data reported by two global citizen science platforms, iNaturalist and eBird, and one local platform, Tucanes en mi Jujuy (TEMJ). We found that the local, focal TEMJ project had a greater number of participants (n = 193), greater presence records (n = 614) and a wide spatial distribution of data in the city. In the iNaturalist and eBird platforms, the number of participants was smaller (n = 9 and 36, respectively), with fewer presence records (n = 12 and 178, respectively), and even fewer reports of species-specific ecological data (feeding, behaviour and age). This reflected clear differences between the three platforms, as TEMJ not only reported more presence data but also more detailed information on age and behaviour. Based on this research, we highlight the commitment of citizens to this particular project and the study of species. Therefore, we recommend the implementation of new local and focal citizen science platforms for more detailed ecological data on other charismatic and focal species.