Citizen science and data collected from various volunteers have an interesting potential in aiding the understanding of many biological and ecological processes. We describe a mobile application that allows the public to map and report occurrences of the odonata species (dragonflies and damselflies) found in the Czech Republic. The application also helps in species classification based on observation details such as date, GPS coordinates, and the altitude, biotope, suborder, and colour. Dragonfly Hunter CZ is a free Android application built on the open-source framework NativeScript using the JavaScript programming language which is now fully available on Google Play. The server side is powered by Apache Server with PHP and MariaDB SQL database. A mobile application is a fast and accurate way to obtain data pertaining to the odonata species, which can be used after expert verification for ecological studies and conservation basis like Red Lists and policy instruments. We expect it to be effective in encouraging Citizen Science and in promoting the proactive reporting of odonates. It can also be extended to the reporting and monitoring of other plant and animal species.

Department of Biology and Ecology Faculty of Science University of Ostrava Ostrava Czech Republic

Department of Informatics and Computers Faculty of Science University of Ostrava Ostrava Czech Republic

Institute for Research and Applications of Fuzzy Modeling University of Ostrava CE IT4Innovations Ostrava Czech Republic

Institute of Environmental Technologies Faculty of Science University of Ostrava Ostrava Czech Republic

Zobrazit více v PubMed

Kobori H, Dickinson JL, Washitani I, Sakurai R, Amano T, Komatsu N, et al. Citizen science: A new approach to advance ecology, education, and conservation. Ecol Res. 2016;31: 1–19. 10.1007/s11284-015-1314-y DOI

Dickinson JL, Shirk J, Bonter D, Bonney R, Crain RL, Martin J, et al. The current state of citizen science as a tool for ecological research and public engagement. Front Ecol Environ. 2012;10: 291–297. 10.1890/110236 DOI

Sullivan BL, Aycrigg JL, Barry JH, Bonney RE, Bruns N, Cooper CB, et al. The eBird enterprise: An integrated approach to development and application of citizen science. Biol Conserv. 2014;169: 31–40. 10.1016/j.biocon.2013.11.003 DOI

Bonney R, Shirk JL, Phillips TB, Wiggins A, Ballard HL, Miller-Rushing AJ, et al. Citizen science: Next steps for citizen science. Science. 2014;343: 1436–1437. 10.1126/science.1251554 PubMed DOI

Gardiner MM, Allee LL, Brown PMJ, Losey JE, Roy HE, Smyth RR. Lessons from lady beetles: Accuracy of monitoring data from US and UK citizen science programs. Front Ecol Environ. 2012;10: 471–476. 10.1890/110185 DOI

Devictor V, Whittaker RJ, Beltrame C. Beyond scarcity: Citizen science programmes as useful tools for conservation biogeography. Divers Distrib. 2010;16: 354–362. 10.1111/j.1472-4642.2009.00615.x DOI

Kalkman VJ, Clausnitzer V, Dijkstra KDB, Orr AG, Paulson DR, Van Tol J. Global diversity of dragonflies (Odonata) in freshwater. Hydrobiologia. 2008;595: 351–363. 10.1007/s10750-007-9029-x DOI

Barua M, Gurdak DJ, Ahmed RA, Tamuly J. Selecting flagships for invertebrate conservation. Biodivers Conserv. 2012;21: 1457–1476. 10.1007/s10531-012-0257-7 DOI

Clausnitzer V, Simaika JP, Samways MJ, Daniel BA. Dragonflies as flagships for sustainable use of water resources in environmental education Dragonflies as flagships for sustainable use of water resources in environmental education. Appl Environ Educ Commun. 2017. 10.1080/1533015X.2017.1333050 DOI

Joly A, Goëau H, Glotin H, Spampinato C, Bonnet P, Vellinga W-P, et al. LifeCLEF 2016: Multimedia life species identification challenges In: Fuhr N, Quaresma P, Gonçalves T, Larsen B, Balog K, Macdonald C, et al., editors. Experimental IR Meets Multilinguality, Multimodality, and Interaction. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. pp. 286–310.

Kumar N, Belhumeur PN, Biswas A, Jacobs DW, Kress WJ, Lopez IC, et al. Leafsnap: A computer vision system for automatic plant species identification In: Fitzgibbon A, Lazebnik S, Perona P, Sato Y, Schmid C, editors. Computer Vision—ECCV 2012. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg; 2012. pp. 502–516.

Goldsmith GR, Morueta-Holme N, Sandel B, Fitz ED, Fitz SD, Boyle B, et al. Plant-O-Matic: A dynamic and mobile guide to all plants of the Americas. Methods Ecol Evol. 2016;7: 960–965. 10.1111/2041-210X.12548 DOI

Dolný A, Bárta D, Waldhauser M, Holuša O, Hanel L. The Dragonflies of the Czech Republic: Ecology, Conservation and Distribution. Vlašim: ČSOP; 2007.

Nature Conservation Agency CR 2016. Nálezová databáze ochrany přírody / Species Occurrence Database. [on-line databáze; portal.nature.cz]. [cit. 2016-01-07]

Dolný A, Harabiš F, Bárta D. Vážky (Isecta: Odonata) České republiky. Praha: Academia; 2016.

Zadeh LA. Fuzzy sets. Inf Control. 1965;8: 338–353. 10.1016/S0019-9958(65)90241-X DOI

Cao N, Štěpnička M, Burda M, Dolný A. Excluding features in fuzzy relational compositions. Expert Syst Appl. 2017;81: 1–11. 10.1016/j.eswa.2017.03.033 DOI

Simaika JP, Samways MJ. An easy-to-use index of ecological integrity for prioritizing freshwater sites and for assessing habitat quality. Biodivers Conserv. 2009;18: 1171–1185. 10.1007/s10531-008-9484-3 DOI

Dolný A, Harabiš F, Bárta D, Lhota S, Drozd P. Aquatic insects indicate terrestrial habitat degradation: Changes in taxonomical structure and functional diversity of dragonflies in tropical rainforest of East Kalimantan. Trop Zool. 2013;25: 141–157. 10.1080/03946975.2012.717480 DOI

Gerlach J, Samways M, Pryke J. Terrestrial invertebrates as bioindicators: An overview of available taxonomic groups. J Insect Conserv. 2013;17: 831–850. 10.1007/s10841-013-9565-9 DOI

Bried JT, Samways MJ. A review of odonatology in freshwater applied ecology and conservation science. Freshwater Science 2015;34(3): 1023–1031. 10.1086/682174 DOI

Samways MJ, Steytler NS. Dragonfly (Odonata) distribution patterns in urban and forest landscapes, and recommendations for riparian management. Biol Conserv. 1996;78: 279–288. 10.1016/S0006-3207(96)00032-8 DOI

Dolný A, Harabiš F. Underground mining can contribute to freshwater biodiversity conservation: Allogenic succession forms suitable habitats for dragonflies. Biol Conserv. 2012;145: 109–117. 10.1016/j.biocon.2011.10.020 DOI

Harabiš F, Dolný A. Military training areas as refuges for threatened dragonfly species: Effect of spatial isolation and military activity. Biol Conserv. 2018;217: 28–35. 10.1016/j.biocon.2017.10.021 DOI

Minteer BA, Collins JP, Love KE, Puschendorf R. Ecology. Avoiding (re)extinction. Science. 2014;344: 260–261. 10.1126/science.1250953 PubMed DOI

Dolný A, Waldhauser M, Kvita L, Kocourková L. New Records of Lilypad Whiteface Leucorrhinia Caudalis (Odonata: Libellulidae) in the Czech Republic. Acta Musei Silesiae, Sci Nat. 2014;63: 185–192. 10.2478/cszma-2014-0019 DOI

Minteer BA, Collins JP, Puschendorf R. Specimen collection: An essential tool—Response. Science (80-). 2014;344: 816 10.1126/science.344.6186.816-a PubMed DOI

Therneau T, Atkinson B, Ripley B. rpart: Recursive Partitioning and Regression Trees. R package version 4.1–10. 2015. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rpart

Cheung WWL, Pitcher TJ, Pauly D. A fuzzy logic expert system to estimate intrinsic extinction vulnerabilities of marine fishes to fishing. Biol Conserv. 2005;124: 97–111. 10.1016/j.biocon.2005.01.017 DOI

Kovac M, Grošelj P. Toward objective assessment of the conservation status of (the Natura 2000) forest habitat types: A comparison of a qualitative and a quantitative modeling approach. Ecol Indic. 2018;89: 281–289. 10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.02.001 DOI

Vilcek T, Jakopec T. Comparative analysis of tools for development of native and hybrid mobile applications. 2017 40th Int Conv Inf Commun Technol Electron Microelectron. 2017; 1516–1521.

Grandcolas P. Loosing the connection between the observation and the specimen: A by-product of the digital era or a trend inherited from general biology? Bionomina. 2017;12: 57 10.11646/bionomina.12.1.7 DOI