Social media occurrences of the Banded Demoiselle in Great Britain

Social media offers an alternative, freely available and understudied
source of biological information, useful to determine species
distributions and with implications for conservation. To investigate the
potential utility of this information source, UK observations of the
Banded Demoiselle – a charismatic and easily identifiable species of
damselfly – were collated from Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter content
posted from 2010 onwards. Although this content was not necessarily
intended as a biological record, when an identifiable photograph or video
is shared along with associated date and location information, this
provides all the data required for a species observation. This dataset
provides key information on the Banded Demoiselle’s UK distribution that
can complement traditional sources of biological recording and
demonstrates the availability and applicability of social media as a
source of ecological data.