Open AccessStrengths and weaknesses of museum and national survey data sets for predicting regional species richness: comparative and combined approaches
Author(s) -
Guralnick Robert,
Van Cleve Jeremy
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
diversity and distributions
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.918
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1472-4642
pISSN - 1366-9516
DOI - 10.1111/j.1366-9516.2005.00164.x
Subject(s) - species richness , strengths and weaknesses , geography , abundance (ecology) , data set , breeding bird survey , survey data collection , set (abstract data type) , ecology , distribution (mathematics) , georeference , citizen science , cartography , physical geography , statistics , computer science , biology , mathematics , mathematical analysis , philosophy , botany , epistemology , programming language
We compiled three independent data sets of bird species occurrences in northeastern Colorado to test how predicted species richness compared to a combined analysis using all the data. The first data set was a georeferenced regional museum data set from two major repositories — the Denver Museum of Nature, and the Science and University of Colorado Museum. The two national survey data sets were the Breeding Bird Survey (summer), and the Great Backyard Bird Count (winter). Resulting analyses show that the museum data sets give richness estimates closest to the combined data set while exhibiting a skewed abundance distribution, whereas survey data sets do not accurately estimate overall richness even though they contain far more records. The combined data set allows the strengths of one data set to augment weaknesses in others. It is likely some museum data sets display skewed abundance distributions due to collectors’ potentially self‐selecting under‐represented species over common ones.