Using community photography to investigate phenology: a case study of coat molt in...

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Received: 9 May 2020    Revised: 12 September 2020    Accepted: 23 September 2020 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.6954

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Using community photography to investigate phenology: A case study of coat molt in the mountain goat (Oreamnos americanus) with missing data Katarzyna Nowak1,2  | Joel Berger3,4  | Amy Panikowski5 | Donald G. Reid6 | Aerin L. Jacob7  | Greg Newman8 | Nicholas E. Young8 | Jon P. Beckmann3 | Shane A. Richards9 1

The Safina Center, Setauket-East Setauket, NY, USA

Abstract

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Participatory approaches, such as community photography, can engage the public in

Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society Yukon, Whitehorse, YT, Canada 3

Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, NY, USA

4 Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA 5

Eshowe, South Africa

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Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, Whitehorse, YT, Canada

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questions of societal and scientific interest while helping advance understanding of ecological patterns and processes. We combined data extracted from communitysourced, spatially explicit photographs with research findings from 2018 fieldwork in the Yukon, Canada, to evaluate winter coat molt patterns and phenology in mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus), a cold-adapted, alpine mammal. Leveraging the community science portals iNaturalist and CitSci, in less than a year we amassed a database of almost seven hundred unique photographs spanning some 4,500 km

Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, Canmore, AB, Canada

between latitudes 37.6°N and 61.1°N from 0 to 4,333 m elevation. Using statisti-

8 Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

datasets, we identified the effects of intrinsic (sex and presence of offspring) and

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School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia Correspondence Katarzyna Nowak, The Safina Center, Setauket-East Setauket, NY 11733, USA. Email: knowak02@gmail.com Shane A. Richards, School of Natural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 37, Hobart TAS 7001, Australia. Email: shane.richards@utas.edu.au Funding information National Park Service; The Safina Center; Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative; Wildlife Conservation Society

cal methods accounting for incomplete data, a common issue in community science broad environmental (latitude and elevation) factors on molt onset and rate and compared our findings with published data. Shedding occurred over a 3-month period between 29 May and 6 September. Effects of sex and offspring on the timing of molt were consistent between the community-sourced and our Yukon data and with findings on wild mountain goats at a long-term research site in west-central Alberta, Canada. Males molted first, followed by females without offspring (4.4 days later in the coarse-grained, geographically wide community science sample; 29.2 days later in our fine-grained Yukon sample) and lastly females with new kids (6.2; 21.2 days later, respectively). Shedding was later at higher elevations and faster at northern latitudes. Our findings establish a basis for employing community photography to examine broad-scale questions about the timing of ecological events, as well as sex differences in response to possible climate drivers. In addition, community photography can help inspire public participation in environmental and outdoor activities specifically with reference to iconic wildlife.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2020 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Ecology and Evolution. 2020;00:1–12.

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