The state of biodiversity for most of the world is largely enigmatic due to a lack of long-term population monitoring data. Citizen science programs could substantially contribute to resolving this data crisis, but there are noted concerns on whether methods can overcome the biases and imprecision inherent to aggregated opportunistic observations. We explicitly test this question by examining the temporal correlation of population time-series estimated from opportunistic citizen science data and a rigorous fishery-independent survey that concurrently sampled populations of coral-reef fishes (n = 87) in Key Largo, Florida, USA, over 25 years. The majority of species exhibited positive temporal correlations between population time-series, but survey congruence varied considerably amongst taxonomic and trait-based groups. Overall, these results suggest that citizen scientists can be effective sentinels of ecological change, and that there may be substantial value in leveraging their observations to monitor otherwise data-limited marine species.

中文翻译：

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评估公民科学家观察在追踪海洋鱼类丰度方面的价值


由于缺乏长期人口监测数据，世界大部分地区的生物多样性状况在很大程度上是个谜。公民科学计划可以为解决这一数据危机做出重大贡献，但人们注意到方法是否可以克服聚合机会主义观察所固有的偏见和不精确性。我们通过检查根据机会主义公民科学数据和严格的独立于渔业的调查估计的种群时间序列的时间相关性来明确测试这个问题，该调查同时对美国佛罗里达州基拉戈岛的珊瑚礁鱼类种群（n = 87）进行了采样，超过25年。大多数物种在种群时间序列之间表现出正时间相关性，但调查一致性在分类群体和基于性状的群体之间存在很大差异。总的来说，这些结果表明公民科学家可以成为生态变化的有效哨兵，并且利用他们的观察来监测数据有限的海洋物种可能具有巨大的价值。