Maximum Entropy Modeling Using Citizen Science: Use Case on Jacobin Cuckoo as an Indicator of Indian Monsoon

Abstract

Abstract. Due to a growing revolution of the citizen science era with the involvement of non-professionals in scientific tasks such as species observation, yields an opportunistic data for modeling and planning purposes. Such citizen science based scientific observations can be a sustainable option to answer many research questions. Here, citizen science data of the Clamator jacobinus bird is taken from Global Biodiversity Information facility to predict its habitat suitability through maximum entropy approach. The distribution data is divided into two monthly sets – June to October and November to May for critically analysing the probable climatic reasons for its migration and understanding the influence of climatic variables in its suitability during the Indian monsoon season and Southern Africa rainy season. Also, the influential role of different bioclimatic variables in determining the bird’s suitability is described in this paper and to predict how this bird will react to different climate change scenarios in 2050 year. The maximum entropy modeling is performed on both sets of data and results are surprisingly interesting, which verifies an Indian myth that this bird is harbinger of the monsoon in India. This study concluded that the precipitation during warmest and wettest quarter, and isothermality are the major factors in determining the migration of Clamator jacobinus, but, hot, dry and cold climate is not suitable for this bird suitability. Such study using the citizen science data can be used in biodiversity planning as well as in improving the agricultural economy because monsoon is considered as an auspicious season for functioning of biodiversity and agricultural tasks.

Role of Maximum Entropy and Citizen Science to Study Habitat Suitability of Jacobin Cuckoo in Different Climate Change Scenarios

“…Similar reviews could be seen by Graham et al [21] and Suarez and Tsutsui [80] for additional uses of museum specimen data, which facilitated biodiversity policy and decision-making process [80]. Amongst the various other advantages, GBIF data can be used for biodiversity assessments [81], taxonomic revisions [82], compiling red lists of threatened species [83] and habitat suitability modelling [31,[84][85][86][87]. The latter is one of the prominent examples of climate change studies in which citizen science-based observations from the GBIF are being increasingly used [88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95].…”

“…In addition, the areas of suitability and unsuitability sites were also calculated to analyse the increase or decrease in the ecological system in response to changes in the monsoon patterns. The first ever Indian monsoon climate change study in terms of Jacobin cuckoos' migration was performed by Singh and Saran [31], in which the geographic occurrences of the Jacobin cuckoo with 19 current bioclimatic variables were modelled using the ML=based Maxent model in R software. This trained model was then projected with future bioclimatic variables under the RCP8.5 scenario of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) to assess the predicted changes in the suitability of Pied cuckoos' habitats by 2050.…”