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Abstract
Tracking global changes in biodiversity requires an enormous amount of data across both time and space. The increasing popularity of citizen science projects, driven in part by mobile device applications, can help provide that data in ways that have been historically impossible with commissioned scientific studies. With an ability to sample over a large area simultaneously, data from citizen science projects provide an excellent opportunity to study spatio-temporal patterns in nature with potentially low centralized cost. For example, accurate information on the drivers of phenology (the timing of biological events such as reproduction) is critical to inform conservation measures and priorities, such as well-timed, cost-effective population monitoring. The overall aim of this research is to advance the use of biodiversity citizen science data for ecology and conservation, using frogs as an exemplar taxonomic group. I investigate how citizen science can answer essential questions about biodiversity, and what motivates participants to collect biodiversity data. Specifically, I use citizen science data to (1) understand the meteorological determinants of frog calling behaviour, (2) quantify core calling periods and likelihood of detection for Australian frogs, and (3) assess ecological correlates of frog co-occurrence patterns. I complement this biodiversity-focused research with a social science approach by (4) surveying citizen science participants to understand how their motivations and behaviour relate to their data collection. I found that day-of-year was a strong, but not isolated cue to breed for most Australian frog species. In detailing the strength of the relationship between meteorological drivers and each frog species, I produced information vital to both planning surveys and interpreting the significance of those results. In surveying participants, I found that citizen science fills an important niche in their lives, holds significant promise for increasing participant wellbeing, thus increasing the number of interested participants and the power to collectively achieve biodiversity monitoring and conservation aims. This interdisciplinary consideration of both the human and wildlife aspects of citizen science can reveal valuable knowledge, solutions, and synchronicities in a diverse conservation landscape.
