Data Paper |
Corresponding author: Jodi J.L. Rowley ( jodi.rowley@austmus.gov.au ) Academic editor: Annemarie Ohler
© 2020 Jodi J.L. Rowley, Corey T. Callaghan.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Rowley JJL, Callaghan CT (2020) The FrogID dataset: expert-validated occurrence records of Australia’s frogs collected by citizen scientists. ZooKeys 912: 139-151. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.912.38253
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This dataset represents expert-validated occurrence records of calling frogs across Australia collected via the national citizen science project FrogID (http://www.frogid.net.au). FrogID relies on participants recording calling frogs using smartphone technology, after which point the frogs are identified by expert validators, resulting in a database of georeferenced frog species records. This dataset represents one full year of the project (10 November 2017–9 November 2018), including 54,864 records of 172 species, 71% of the known frog species in Australia. This is the first instalment of the dataset, and we anticipate providing updated datasets on an annual basis.
amphibians, bioacoustics, biodiversity data, citizen science, smartphone
Biodiversity monitoring is critical for conservation, useful in warning of impending extinction crises, and has direct implications for management practices for improved biodiversity targets (
Frogs and other amphibians are sensitive to changes in their environment due to their biphasic lifestyle (with most species having an aquatic larval stage and a terrestrial adult), semi-permeable skin, and reliance on specific environmental conditions for reproduction (
Despite the need for biodiversity data on frogs, frogs are inherently difficult to survey, leaving a lack of detailed knowledge of broad-scale distributions, occurrences, and habitat associations. This is largely a result of logistical constraints, including a lack of funding available for surveys and access to often remote sites, and the fact that many frog species are difficult to detect, having activity patterns highly reliant on weather. Many frog species are also small and camouflaged, rendering them difficult to visually locate.
The frog advertisement call serves as a premating isolation mechanism (
All known frog species in Australia have audible advertisement calls and only a few are difficult to identify to species via their calls alone (e.g., several species of the genus Pseudophryne Fitzinger, 1843 in the places where they co-occur;
Launched on 10 November 2017 and led by the Australian Museum, FrogID is the first citizen science initiative aimed at capturing validated biodiversity data on Australian frogs on a national scale (
Publishing biodiversity data advances our collective knowledge on global biodiversity (
Project title: FrogID
Sponsoring institution: Australian Museum, 1 William Street, Sydney, NSW 2010
Data published through GBIF: https://doi.org/10.15468/wazqft
Data published through a self-hosted Zenodo repository: https://zenodo.org/record/3612700
Funding for the FrogID project was provided by the Australian Government’s Citizen Science Grants program, the Impact Grants program of IBM Australia provided the resources to build the FrogID App. In-kind funding was provided by the Australian Museum. Bunnings and Fyna Foods are project partners.
While effective conservation relies on accurate knowledge of where species occur, releasing the locations of observation records may have inadvertent negative impacts (
We therefore follow ethical data publication guidelines (e.g.,
Geoprivacy options, which dictate whether or not the exact latitude and longitude coordinates are provided in our published dataset.
Geoprivacy option | Action |
---|---|
Open | No buffering of coordinates. |
Obscured | Decimal coordinates rounded to nearest 0.1 degree. Actual coordinates are available upon special request. |
Private | Record is not included in our published dataset but is available upon special request. |
Associated frog species threat categories and associated geoprivacy options (Table
Frog species threat category | Geoprivacy |
---|---|
Not listed | Species is generally open, but may be obscured or private (if range-restricted or no confirmed recent records of the species). |
Vulnerable | Species is generally open but may be obscured (with individual records outside of known range private), or private (if range-restricted or no confirmed recent records of the species). |
Endangered | Species is generally obscured (with individual records outside of known range private) but may be private (if range-restricted or no confirmed recent records of the species). |
Critically Endangered | Private. |
Extinct | Private. |
Throughout the first year of the FrogID project, 179 species of six families and 23 genera were recorded and are represented in the database, accumulating to 55,003 biodiversity records. The top-six most recorded species were: Crinia signifera Girard, 1853, Limnodynastes peronii (Duméril & Bibron, 1841), Litoria peronii (Tschudi, 1838), Litoria fallax (Peters, 1880), Limnodynastes tasmaniensis Günther, 1858, and Litoria ewingii (Duméril & Bibron, 1841) (Fig.
The openly accessible published dataset – after applying our aforementioned rules on sensitive species and records – hosts 172 species of the 179. A total of 139 submissions of 11 species were deemed private (Table
The frog fauna of Australia remains incompletely known. The database will be updated on an ongoing process, incorporating taxonomic changes, including any new species described. Annual releases will reflect these changes. The date of each data release will be critical for users to track.
Kingdom: Animal
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Amphibia
Order: Anura
Families: Bufonidae, Limnodynastidae, Microhylidae, Myobatrachidae, Pelodryadidae, Ranidae
Genera: Adelotus, Assa, Austrochaperina, Cophixalus, Crinia, Cyclorana, Geocrinia, Heleioporus, Lechriodus, Limnodynastes, Litoria, Metacrinia, Mixophyes, Myobatrachus, Neobatrachus, Notaden, Papurana, Paracrinia, Philoria, Platyplectrum, Pseudophryne, Rhinella, Uperoleia
Species: Adelotus brevis, Assa darlingtoni, Austrochaperina adelphe, Austrochaperina fryi, Austrochaperina gracilipes, Austrochaperina pluvialis, Austrochaperina robusta, Cophixalus australis, Cophixalus bombiens, Cophixalus infacetus, Cophixalus ornatus, Cophixalus saxatilis, Crinia bilingua, Crinia deserticola, Crinia flindersensis, Crinia georgiana, Crinia glauerti, Crinia insignifera, Crinia parinsignifera, Crinia pseudinsignifera, Crinia remota, Crinia signifera, Crinia sloanei, Crinia subinsignifera, Crinia tasmaniensis, Crinia tinnula, Cyclorana alboguttata, Cyclorana australis, Cyclorana brevipes, Cyclorana cultripes, Cyclorana longipes, Cyclorana maculosa, Cyclorana maini, Cyclorana novaehollandiae, Cyclorana occidentalis, Cyclorana platycephala, Cyclorana verrucosa, Geocrinia laevis, Geocrinia leai, Geocrinia rosea, Geocrinia victoriana, Heleioporus albopunctatus, Heleioporus australiacus, Heleioporus barycragus, Heleioporus eyrei, Heleioporus inornatus, Heleioporus psammophilus, Lechriodus fletcheri, Limnodynastes convexiusculus, Limnodynastes depressus, Limnodynastes dorsalis, Limnodynastes dumerilii, Limnodynastes fletcheri, Limnodynastes interioris, Limnodynastes peronii, Limnodynastes salmini, Limnodynastes tasmaniensis, Limnodynastes terraereginae, Litoria adelaidensis, Litoria aurea, Litoria barringtonensis, Litoria bicolor, Litoria brevipalmata, Litoria burrowsae, Litoria caerulea, Litoria chloris, Litoria citropa, Litoria cooloolensis, Litoria coplandi, Litoria cyclorhyncha, Litoria daviesae, Litoria dayi, Litoria dentata, Litoria electrica, Litoria eucnemis, Litoria ewingii, Litoria fallax, Litoria freycineti, Litoria gilleni, Litoria gracilenta, Litoria inermis, Litoria infrafrenata, Litoria jervisiensis, Litoria jungguy, Litoria latopalmata, Litoria lesueuri, Litoria littlejohni, Litoria meiriana, Litoria microbelos, Litoria moorei, Litoria nasuta, Litoria nigrofrenata, Litoria nudidigitus, Litoria olongburensis, Litoria pallida, Litoria paraewingi, Litoria pearsoniana, Litoria peronii, Litoria personata, Litoria phyllochroa, Litoria raniformis, Litoria revelata, Litoria rheocola, Litoria rothii, Litoria rubella, Litoria serrata, Litoria subglandulosa, Litoria tornieri, Litoria tyleri, Litoria verreauxii, Litoria watjulumensis, Litoria wilcoxii, Litoria xanthomera, Metacrinia nichollsi, Mixophyes balbus, Mixophyes carbinensis, Mixophyes coggeri, Mixophyes fasciolatus, Mixophyes fleayi, Mixophyes iteratus, Mixophyes schevilli, Myobatrachus gouldii, Neobatrachus aquilonius, Neobatrachus kunapalari, Neobatrachus pelobatoides, Neobatrachus pictus, Neobatrachus sudellae, Neobatrachus sutor, Neobatrachus wilsmorei, Notaden bennettii, Notaden melanoscaphus, Notaden nichollsi, Papurana daemeli, Paracrinia haswelli, Philoria kundagungan, Philoria loveridgei, Philoria pughi, Philoria richmondensis, Philoria sphagnicola, Platyplectrum ornatum, Platyplectrum spenceri, Pseudophryne australis, Pseudophryne bibronii, Pseudophryne coriacea, Pseudophryne dendyi, Pseudophryne douglasi, Pseudophryne guentheri, Pseudophryne major, Pseudophryne occidentalis, Pseudophryne raveni, Pseudophryne semimarmorata, Rhinella marina, Uperoleia altissima, Uperoleia arenicola, Uperoleia aspera, Uperoleia borealis, Uperoleia crassa, Uperoleia daviesae, Uperoleia fusca, Uperoleia inundata, Uperoleia laevigata, Uperoleia lithomoda, Uperoleia littlejohni, Uperoleia mahonyi, Uperoleia mimula, Uperoleia minima, Uperoleia mjobergii, Uperoleia rugosa, Uperoleia saxatilis, Uperoleia talpa, Uperoleia trachyderma, Uperoleia tyleri.
Spatial coverage: FrogID submissions have come from across Australia but, not surprisingly, are biased towards populated areas, with large areas of Australia, particularly in remote areas, lacking FrogID records. Despite this bias, the spatial coverage of this project encompasses the continent of Australia (Fig.
Temporal coverage: FrogID is an ongoing data collection project, and this dataset (version 1.0) makes the first year of data collection available, 10 November 2017–9 November 2018. Data was exported from the FrogID database on 14 January 2020. We anticipate releasing an updated dataset annually.
Validated frog records: FrogID collects data via a free smartphone app (iOS and Android). Recordings are 20–60 seconds in MPEG AAC audio (mp4a) files. The time, date, and geographic location (latitude, longitude, and an estimate of precision of geographic location) are automatically added by the app at the time of recording. Each recording has an estimate of precision and, depending on the question, these records may influence results. As such, for records that rely heavily on geographic precision, we recommend filtering to records which have an estimate of geographic uncertainty of <3000 m. After recordings are submitted, they are stored in a cloud-based Content Management System (CMS), before being validated. FrogID validators, experts in identifying frog species by their calls, then use the audio and associated information, plus a reference call library, to identify the frog species calling in the recording. One submission can have multiple frog species calling within it. After these processes, we are left with a presence-only dataset of frog species in Australia. For a more detailed overview of methodology and design aspects, see
Object name: FrogID dataset
Character encoding: UTF-8
Format name: Darwin Core Archive Format
Format version: 1.0
Distribution: https://doi.org/10.15468/wazqft; https://zenodo.org/record/3612700
Publication date of data: 22 January 2020
Language: English
Licenses of use: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) 4.0 License
Metadata language: English
Date of metadata creation: 19 January 2020
Hierarchy level: Dataset
The dataset includes basic biodiversity occurrence data, with Darwin Core terms (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/), and is summarized in Table
Data field | Description |
---|---|
datasetName | FrogID |
basisOfRecord | Occurrence |
dataGeneralizations | Highlights the geoprivacy options that were implemented |
occurrenceID | Unique ID for each record in the dataset |
sex | Male frogs are being recorded |
lifestage | Adult frogs are recorded in FrogID |
behavior | Only calling frogs are entered into the FrogID database |
samplingProtocol | Call recording |
country | Australia |
machineObservation | An occurrence record based on an audio recording |
eventID | Refers to the submission id – one submission can have more than one record |
decimalLatitude | Latitude |
decimalLongitude | Longitude |
scientificName | Species name (Genus species). |
eventDate | Date in year-month-day format |
eventTime | Time the recording was taken |
coordinateUncertaintyInMeters | A measure of the gps accuracy, measured in meters. See notes in methods |
geoprivacy | Indicates whether the record is included and/or coordinates are buffered |
recordedBy | Unique user id |
stateProvince | Australian state of the record |
modified | The date the record was last updated: useful for updating taxonomy or correcting errors in future dataset uploads |
The FrogID database of expert-validated records of frogs across Australia represents a significant and growing contribution to our understanding of frogs in Australia. The first year of FrogID has resulted in the collection of over 55,000 expert-validated records of frogs across Australia. As frogs call almost exclusively from breeding sites, localities of calling frogs also provide vital information on their breeding habitats and times.
FrogID data provides a valuable resource aimed to help enhance our knowledge of frog distribution and occurrence in Australia. So far, the data have (1) shown new knowledge of distribution and breeding seasons for several species, (2) detected native frogs outside their native range, likely transported by humans, (3) collected data on invasive Cane Toads (Rhinella marina) in Australia, (4) and detected breeding populations of rare and threatened species (
We would like to thank the Citizen Science Grants of the Australian Government for providing funding for the FrogID project; the Impact Grants program of IBM Australia for providing the resources to build the FrogID App; Bunnings and Fyna Foods for supporting FrogID as project partners; the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Museums Victoria, Queensland Museum, South Australian Museum, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, and Western Australian Museum as FrogID partner museums; the many Australian Museum staff and volunteers who make up the FrogID team; and the thousands of citizen scientists across Australia who have volunteered their time to record frogs.
The 241 frog species known from Australia (including the introduced Cane Toad), taxonomic authority and geoprivacy category used
Data type: Species data