Citizen science and other records
Our main source of data was our citizen science project: Red Ecuatoriana
para el Monitoreo de Fauna Atropellada (hereafter REMFA). This project
started in September 2020 and is ongoing, for this study we capture
records reported in the first 24 months (September 2020-2022). REMFA is
an initiative that in addition to capture roadkill data seeks to promote
environmental education on road ecology to citizens. Using word of
mouth, traditional and social media we invited people to share photos
and geographic location of roadkill events in Ecuador. Communications
included emails, social networks (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter),
messaging platforms (Whatsapp), and the mobile App Epicollect5
(dedicated project “Animales atropellados Ecuador”). We also compiled
roadkill records from iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/), an
open global online system where naturalists and citizen scientists share
observations of biodiversity. Additionally, we included sporadic
roadkill records found in the scientific literature but that had not
been gathered via systematic surveys.
All records were checked (confirming species identification when
photographs were available and location when GPS data were provided) and
combined into a standardized electronic database. Without standardized
methodologies and no information on monitoring effort, estimating
roadkill rates, as done for systematic studies, was not possible.
Instead, we summarize these data by reporting total number of records
for identified taxonomic classes and species (when identified), and
total for each Ecuadorian province.
For systematic and non-systematic data, when geographical coordinates of
roadkill events were not available, we defined coordinates as the
central point of the geographical reference provided by citizens or the
published source. For these cases, we included an uncertainty value to
reflect the potential error in the estimated coordinates based on the
described area or road. This was given in km when we had information on
the location of the road where the roadkill was found, or in
km2 when the road was not described but had
information on the administrative area.