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  • Andrew M. Durso
    Florida Gulf Coast University
  • R. Ruiz de Castañeda
    University of Geneva
  • Camille Montalcini
    University of Bern
  • M. Rosa Mondardini
    University of Zürich
  • Jose L. Fernandez-Marquez
    University of Geneva
  • Francois Grey
    University of Geneva
  • Martin M. Müller
    École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
  • Peter Uetz
    Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Benjamin Marshall
    Suranaree University of Technology
  • Russell J. Gray
  • Christopher E. Smith
    HerpMapper, St. Paul
  • Donald Becker
    HerpMapper, St. Paul
  • Michael Pingleton
    HerpMapper, St. Paul
  • Jose Louies
    Indian Snakes, Kottayam
  • Arthur D. Abegg
    University of Sao Paulo
  • Jeannot Akuboy
    University of Kisangani
  • Gabriel Alcoba
    University of Geneva
  • Jennifer C. Daltry
    Fauna & Flora International, Cambridge
  • Omar M. Entiauspe-Neto
    Universidade Federal do Rio Grande
  • Paul Freed
    Reptile Database, Richmond, VA
  • Marco Antonio de Freitas
    Murici Ecological Station
  • Xavier Glaudas
  • Song Huang
    Anhui Normal University
  • Tiangqi Huang
    Rutgers University
  • Yatin Kalki
    Madras Crocodile Bank Trust
  • Yosuke Kojima
    Tohoku University
  • Anne Laudisoit
    EcoHealth Alliance, New York
  • Kul Prasad Limbu
    Tribhuvan University
  • José G. Martínez-Fonseca
    Northern Arizona University
  • Konrad Mebert
    Global Biology, Birr, Switzerland
  • M.O. Rödel
    Institute of Development, Ecology, Conservation & Cooperation, Rome
  • Sara Ruane
    Rutgers University
  • Manuel Ruedi
    Museum d'Histoire naturelle Geneve
  • Andreas Schmitz
    Museum d'Histoire naturelle Geneve
  • Sarah A. Tatum
    University of North Georgia
  • Frank Tillack
    Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Berlin
  • Avinash Visvanathan
    Friends of Snakes Society, Hyderabad
  • Wolfgang Wüster
  • Isabelle Bolon
    University of Geneva
The secretive behavior and life history of snakes makes studying their biology, distribution, and the epidemiology of venomous snakebite challenging. One of the most useful, most versatile, and easiest to collect types of biological data are photographs, particularly those that are connected with geographic location and date-time metadata. Photos verify occurrence records, provide data on phenotypes and ecology, and are often used to illustrate new species descriptions, field guides and identification keys, as well as in training humans and computer vision algorithms to identify snakes. We scoured eleven online and two offline sources of snake photos in an attempt to collect as many photos of as many snake species as possible, and attempt to explain some of the inter-species variation in photograph quantity among global regions and taxonomic groups, and with regard to medical importance, human population density, and range size. We collected a total of 725,565 photos—between 1 and 48,696 photos of 3098 of the world’s 3879 snake species (79.9%), leaving 781 “most wanted” species with no photos (20.1% of all currently-described species as of the December 2020 release of The Reptile Database). We provide a list of most wanted species sortable by family, continent, authority, and medical importance, and encourage snake photographers worldwide to submit photos and associated metadata, particularly of “missing” species, to the most permanent and useful online archives: The Reptile Database, iNaturalist, and HerpMapper

Keywords

  • Snakes, Biodiversity, Photography, Snakebite, Endemism, Online data, Citizen Science, Data science
Original languageEnglish
Article number100071
Number of pages19
JournalToxicon: X
Volume9-10
Early online date22 Jun 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2021

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