Durso Andrew M, Ruiz de Castañeda Rafael, Montalcini Camille, Mondardini M Rosa, Fernandez-Marques Jose L, Grey François, Müller Martin M, Uetz Peter, Marshall Benjamin M, Gray Russell J, Smith Christopher E, Becker Donald, Pingleton Michael, Louies Jose, Abegg Arthur D, Akuboy Jeannot, Alcoba Gabriel, Daltry Jennifer C, Entiauspe-Neto Omar M, Freed Paul, de Freitas Marco Antonio, Glaudas Xavier, Huang Song, Huang Tianqi, Kalki Yatin, Kojima Yosuke, Laudisoit Anne, Limbu Kul Prasad, Martínez-Fonseca José G, Mebert Konrad, Rödel Mark-Oliver, Ruane Sara, Ruedi Manuel, Schmitz Andreas, Tatum Sarah A, Tillack Frank, Visvanathan Avinash, Wüster Wolfgang, Bolon Isabelle
Department of Biological Sciences, Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers, FL, USA.
Institute of Global Health, Department of Community Health and Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Toxicon X. 2021 Jun 22;9-10:100071. doi: 10.1016/j.toxcx.2021.100071. eCollection 2021 Jul.
The secretive behavior and life history of snakes makes studying their biology, distribution, and the epidemiology of venomous snakebite challenging. One of the most useful, most versatile, and easiest to collect types of biological data are photographs, particularly those that are connected with geographic location and date-time metadata. Photos verify occurrence records, provide data on phenotypes and ecology, and are often used to illustrate new species descriptions, field guides and identification keys, as well as in training humans and computer vision algorithms to identify snakes. We scoured eleven online and two offline sources of snake photos in an attempt to collect as many photos of as many snake species as possible, and attempt to explain some of the inter-species variation in photograph quantity among global regions and taxonomic groups, and with regard to medical importance, human population density, and range size. We collected a total of 725,565 photos-between 1 and 48,696 photos of 3098 of the world's 3879 snake species (79.9%), leaving 781 "most wanted" species with no photos (20.1% of all currently-described species as of the December 2020 release of The Reptile Database). We provide a list of most wanted species sortable by family, continent, authority, and medical importance, and encourage snake photographers worldwide to submit photos and associated metadata, particularly of "missing" species, to the most permanent and useful online archives: The Reptile Database, iNaturalist, and HerpMapper.
蛇的隐秘行为和生活史使得研究它们的生物学、分布以及毒蛇咬伤的流行病学变得具有挑战性。生物学数据中最有用、最通用且最易于收集的类型之一是照片，特别是那些带有地理位置和日期时间元数据的照片。照片可核实出现记录，提供有关表型和生态的数据，并且经常用于说明新物种描述、野外指南和鉴定手册，以及用于训练人类和计算机视觉算法来识别蛇。我们搜索了11个在线和2个离线的蛇类照片来源，试图收集尽可能多的蛇类物种的照片，并试图解释全球各地区和分类群之间在照片数量上的一些种间差异，以及与医学重要性、人口密度和分布范围大小的关系。我们总共收集了725,565张照片——涵盖了世界上3879种蛇类中的3098种（79.9%），每种蛇的照片数量在1至48,696张之间，还有781种“最急需的”物种没有照片（截至2020年12月《爬行动物数据库》发布时，占所有已描述物种的20.1%）。我们提供了一份按科、大陆、权威机构和医学重要性排序的最急需物种清单，并鼓励全球的蛇类摄影师将照片及相关元数据，特别是“缺失”物种的照片及元数据，提交到最永久且有用的在线档案库：《爬行动物数据库》、iNaturalist和HerpMapper。
