Project 2502: M. A. O’Leary, K. Alphonse, A. H. Mariangeles, D. Cavaliere, A. Cirranello, T. G. Dietterich, M. Julius, S. Kaufman, E. Law, M. Passarotti, A. Reft, J. Robalino, N. B. Simmons, S. Y. Smith, D. W. Stevenson, E. Theriot, P. M. Velazco, R. L. Walls, M. Yu, M. Daly. 2018. Crowds Replicate Performance of Scientific Experts Scoring Phylogenetic Matrices of Phenotypes. Systematic Biology. 67 (1):49-60.
Abstract
Scientists building the Tree of Life face an overwhelming challenge to categorize phenotypes (e.g., anatomy, physiology) from millions of living and fossil species. This biodiversity challenge far outstrips the capacities of trained scientific experts. Here we explore whether crowdsourcing can be used to collect matrix data on a large scale with the participation of the non-expert students, or “citizen scientists.” Crowdsourcing, or data collection by non-experts, frequently via the internet, has enabled scientists to tackle some large-scale data collection challenges too massive for individuals or scientific teams alone. The quality of work by non-expert crowds is, however, often questioned and little data has been collected on how such crowds perform on complex tasks such as phylogenetic character coding. We studied a crowd of over 600 non-experts, and found that they could use images to identify anatomical similarity (hypotheses of homology) with an average accuracy of 82% compared to scores provided by experts in the field. This performance pattern held across the Tree of Life, from protists to vertebrates. We introduce a procedure that predicts the difficulty of each character and that can be used to assign harder characters to experts and easier characters to a non-expert crowd for scoring. We test this procedure in a controlled experiment comparing crowd scores to those of experts and show that crowds can produce matrices with over 90% of cells scored correctly while reducing the number of cells to be scored by experts by 50%. Preparation time, including image collection and processing, for a crowdsourcing experiment is significant, and does not currently save time of scientific experts overall. However, if innovations in automation or robotics can reduce such effort, then large-scale implementation of our method could greatly increase the collective scientific knowledge of species phenotypes for phylogenetic tree building. For the field of crowdsourcing, we provide a rare study with ground truth, or an experimental control that many studies lack, and contribute new methods on how to coordinate the work of experts and non-experts. We show that there are important instances in which crowd consensus is not a good proxy for correctness.Read the article »
Article DOI: 10.1093/sysbio/syx052
Project DOI: 10.7934/P2502, http://dx.doi.org/10.7934/P2502
This project contains | Matrices |
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Download Project SDD File | Total scored cells: 105 Total media associated with cells: 105 Total labels associated with cell media: 67 |
Characters | |
Total characters: 7 Total characters with associated media: 7 Total characters with media with labels: 0 Total character states: 14 Total character states with associated media: 14 Total character states with media with labels:0 Total unordered/ordered characters:7/0 |
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MorphoBank Project 2502
MorphoBank Project 2502
- Creation Date:
21 July 2016 - Publication Date:
30 May 2017 - Project views: 160232
- Matrix downloads: 2
This research
supported by
Authors' Institutions
- Ohio State University
- Oregon State University
- University of Arizona
- University of Michigan
- University of Texas at Austin
- University of Waterloo
- American Museum of Natural History
- Drexel University
- Kenx Technology Inc
- New York Botanical Garden
- St. Cloud State University
- Stony Brook University
- Whirl-i-gig
- College of William and Mary
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Members
member name | taxa | specimens | media | chars | character
| cell scorings (scored, NPA, "-") | cell
| rules | ||||||
Javier Robalino Project Administrator | 15 | 160 | 548 | 7 | 21 | 0 | 105 (102, 0, 3) | 105 | 67 | 1 | ||||
Maureen O'Leary Full membership | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 (0, 0, 0) | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Taxonomic Overview for Matrix 'M24143' (15 Taxa)
taxon | unscored cells |
scored cells |
no cell support |
NPA cells |
"-" cells | cell images | labels on cell images |
member access |
[1] Aristaeopsis edwardsiana Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 7 | 2 |
[2] Aristeus virilis Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 2 | 2 |
[3] Austropenaeus nitidus Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 2 |
[4] Benthesicymus investigatoris Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 1 | 2 |
[5] Benthonectes filipes Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 7 | 2 |
[6] Farfantepenaeus aztecus Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 7 | 2 |
[7] Haliporoides sibogae Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 7 | 2 |
[8] Melicertus latisulcatus Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 7 | 2 |
[9] Metapenaeus ensis Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 2 | 2 |
[10] Penaeopsis eduardoi Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 7 | 2 |
[11] Penaeus monodon Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 2 |
[12] Plesiopenaeus armatus Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 7 | 2 |
[13] Sicyonia brevirostris Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 2 |
[14] Sicyonia lancifer Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 7 | 6 | 2 |
[15] Solenocera melantho Last Modified in 07/22/16 | 0 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 7 | 2 |
Project views
type | number of views | Individual items viewed (where applicable) |
Total project views | 160232 | |
Project overview | 2428 | |
Matrix views | 1417 | Matrix landing page (1142 views); Morphological Characters: Penaeoidea (275 views); |
Documents list | 1067 | |
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Views for media list | 7765 | |
Bibliography | 10488 | |
Taxon list | 6657 | |
Specimen list | 49039 |
Project downloads
type | number of downloads | Individual items downloaded (where applicable) |
Total downloads from project | 209 | |
Project downloads | 206 | |
Document downloads | 1 | Syst Biol Supplementary Material (1 download); |
Matrix downloads | 2 | Morphological Characters: Penaeoidea (2 downloads); |