Photo observations of flowers potentially available to and observed with Chauliognathus marginatus and Chauliognathus pensylvanicus from iNaturalist.org

Digital
specimens collected by community members are a largely untapped source of
entomological data. By mining data from photo observations uploaded to online
community data repositories, researchers can utilize this wealth of information
to address questions about predator-prey interactions, phenotypic variation
within species, plant-pollinator interactions, and a host of other topics. We
mined data from photo observations on the community science website iNaturalist
to investigate patterns in host plant availability and affiliation by two
species of soldier beetles, <i>Chauliognathus marginatus</i> (Fabricius, 1775)
and <i>Chauliognathus pensylvanicus</i> (De Geer, 1774). This dataset contains
photo observations of these two species of beetles on flowering plants throughout
the eastern United States from 2000-2019. It also contains photo observations
of flowering plants potentially available to these two species, or blooming
across their range during their seasonal periods of activity, in 2018.