Olhando da janela lateral: registros em plataformas naturalistas e seu potencial para a conservação da biodiversidade

Abstract

Observing nature is an ancient practice, carried out to meet different human needs, such as survival, art, and science. Throughout history, the ways of keeping a record of the environment have changed, from cave paintings to museum collections. In the 21st century, new technologies have made it possible to collect and store data on biodiversity, including naturalist platforms that are used by any individual, called citizen scientists. Operating openly, the data can be accessed by researchers and used in conservation projects, for example. However, we present some things that discourage its application. In this sense, the objective of this work was to describe the data from iNaturalist, Xeno-canto, and Observation.org for Ceará between 2004 and 2024. The data were obtained through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and analyzed regarding their spatio-temporal distribution, observed taxa, user habits, completeness of information, and coverage of threatened species, in addition to discussing the potential for conservation. A total of 27,616 observations were obtained, covering all regions of Ceará, a large part of which was provided by iNaturalist, reflecting its growing popularity.Birds, plants, insects, and arachnids were the taxa most observed by users, who did not show taxonomic preferences. The three platforms differed in the completeness of information about their records, with Xeno-canto presenting records with more detail compared to the others. iNaturalist presented more threatened species for Ceará in its database, sharing more similarities with official conservation status lists. Given the characteristics and potential errors found in the platform data for the state, the results presented here contribute to efforts to understand the reach of citizen science platforms and their value for conservation, which find better returns when combined with traditional science.