Xicotli Data: a project to retrieve plant-bee interactions from citizen science

Abstract

Xicotli data is the short name given to the dataset generated within the project framework "Integration of Biodiversity Data for the Management and Conservation of Wild Bee-Plant Interactions in Mexico (2021-2023)", as xicotli is the generic word for a bee in Nahuatl. The team comprised eco-informaticians, ecologists and taxonomists of both native bees and flora. The generated dataset contains so far 4,532 curated records of the plants, which are potential hosts of species of three focal families of bees native to Mexico: Apidae, Halictidae and Megachilidae and morphological and ecological data of the plant-bee interactions. This dataset was integrated and mobilised from citizen observations available at naturalista.mx (iNat), which were compiled through the iNaturalist project. The new information obtained with the Xicotli data project was: Taxonomic information about bee species curated by taxonomists based on the information contained in iNaturalist; Taxonomic identification of the host plants by a botanist from the photos compiled by the Xicotli Data project; Data on the ecomorphological traits of bees and plants based on expert knowledge and literature. Taxonomic information about bee species curated by taxonomists based on the information contained in iNaturalist; Taxonomic identification of the host plants by a botanist from the photos compiled by the Xicotli Data project; Data on the ecomorphological traits of bees and plants based on expert knowledge and literature. All the data were integrated into the Xicotli Data Project via the creation of new “observation fields". The visibility of the information originally contained in iNaturalist was maximized and can be consulted directly on the iNaturalist platform.