MostMisidentifiedSpecies

What bee species in Canada are the most commonly misidentified and why? 🔎 🐝

For additional information, please read our Project Overview below, or see our Discussion Board and Wiki Pages.

Project overview

Goal

To determine the most commonly misidentified bee species in Canada and uncover what makes these species more difficult to identify using the iNaturalist database.

Context

The iNaturalist database is comprised of citizen science identification contributions and is commonly used by conservation authorities, park planners, and researchers alike. An existing problem with the iNaturalist database is that observations may be misidentified by users even if the entry is deemed to be "Research Grade". We want to determine if certain species or taxonomic groups are more likely to be misidentified by iNaturalist users and what may bias these groups towards misidentification using bees within Canada as a case study.

Data

We are using all current (as of 2020-05-27) iNaturalist observations of "Honey Bees, Bumble Bees, and Allies", better known as the family Apidae, from across Canada extracted from the iNaturalist API. We have also included phylogenetic information from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) for each genera in our dataset.

Contributors -- in no particular order

Jade Dawson - @jadedaws
Victor Cameron - @vcameron1
Catherine Sirois-Delisle - @CatherineDelisle
Simon Morvan - @SimonMorvan
Brenda Thompson - @fendabenda