Using citizen science records from iNaturalist to document geographical range outliers in Australian skinks

作者：Feliks Ozolina, Shai Meiri, Jules E. Farquhar, David G. Chapple · 发表于：Wildlife Research · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1071/wr24060 · 被引用次数：8 · 研究领域：Species Distribution and Climate Change、Wildlife Ecology and Conservation、Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior

Context Accurately describing a species’ geographical distribution is important for informing research and conservation efforts. The citizen science platform iNaturalist provides a valuable resource for increasing our understanding of species distributions. Aims To locate and document geographical range outliers in Australian skinks, and to provide evidence of populations undocumented in the existing literature. Methods We compared observations of Australian skinks on iNaturalist to digital range maps from both the Global Assessment of Reptile Distributions (GARD), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and a recent Australian reptile field guide. Outlying observations were examined to determine whether they were reliable records. We also made statistical comparisons of the characteristics of species with and without iNaturalist observations and outliers both among species range sizes and subfamilies. Key results In total, 319 (of ~462) native Australian skink species had iNaturalist records. These species generally had larger range sizes, and skink subfamilies were represented unequally. Eighty-two skink species (25.7%) had at least one geographical range outlier, and 33 (10.3%) had at least one novel range outlier, unrecorded anywhere in the scientific literature. Range size did not affect the likelihood of a species to have outliers, but there was still a difference among subfamilies. We found 656 potentially interesting distribution anomalies. Most...