The North American Butterfly Monitoring Network: New systems for data management, analysis, and visualization

Citizen scientists throughout North America perform thousands of butterfly surveys each year, yet these programs remain little known and the data have been underutilized both for local management or large-scale analyses. ... [ view full abstract ]

Citizen scientists throughout North America perform thousands of butterfly surveys each year, yet these programs remain little known and the data have been underutilized both for local management or large-scale analyses. Despite this, the growth of these programs over the past five years has been astounding. The North American Butterfly Monitoring Network (www.nab-net.org) has recently formed to promote and support data management, access, and analysis of butterfly monitoring data. This group is also joining forces with MonarchNet (www.monarchnet.org) to help connect efforts between general butterfly surveys and the large network of surveys focused solely on monarchs (Danaus plexippus). This community of practitioners has come together to leverage efforts, build and share resources, and coordinate protocols and data standards to allow easier integration of data across programs. We present a broad overview of general butterfly and monarch monitoring efforts, including currently-available online tools. We also discuss plans for taxonomic resolution between programs that adhere to different standards and data integration and analysis for programs that use divergent protocols. We then present two new efforts that will greatly expand data access and visualization. The first is a platform for the North American Butterfly Association’s multiple monitoring programs and the other is a data platform (PollardBase) for a consortium of regional (transect-based) monitoring programs. We believe these efforts could serve as a model for other organism-based networks of programs, such as dragonflies, bees or moths.