Dragonfly Hunter CZ: Mobile application for biological species recognition in citizen science

Abstract

Citizen science and data collected from various volunteers have an interesting potential in aiding the understanding of many biological and ecological processes. We describe a mobile application that allows the public to map and report occurrences of the odonata species (dragonflies and damselflies) found in the Czech Republic. The application also helps in species classification based on observation details such as date, GPS coordinates, and the altitude, biotope, suborder, and colour. Dragonfly Hunter CZ is a free Android application built on the open-source framework NativeScript using the JavaScript programming language which is now fully available on Google Play. The server side is powered by Apache Server with PHP and MariaDB SQL database. A mobile application is a fast and accurate way to obtain data pertaining to the odonata species, which can be used after expert verification for ecological studies and conservation basis like Red Lists and policy instruments. We expect it to be effective in encouraging Citizen Science and in promoting the proactive reporting of odonates. It can also be extended to the reporting and monitoring of other plant and animal species.