Passively crowdsourcing images online for measuring broad-scale fly (Diptera) floral interactions and biodiversity

Flies (Diptera) represent one of the largest and most important groups pollinators on planet; however, little is known about interactions between flies flowers compared to well-known pollinators, such as bees. Understanding pollinator assemblages key conserving biodiversity ecosystem services, but monitoring Diptera time cost intensive. Using photographs blooming taken by photographers worldwide uploaded internet repositories, we built a dataset 1,275 images fly-flower visitations extracted fly flower taxonomic information, characteristics (shape color), activity (pollen carrying foraging). The resulting shows other biases can still provide an initial overview factors that affect pollination Diptera. We identified 22 families flies, with blow (Family Calliphoridae) representative (29%) 63 flowers, Asteraceae (42%) Apiaceae (21%) abundant. logistic regression models, found likelihood visibly pollen in was determined interaction color shape: pollen-carrying more likely when elongate cluster were green-yellow. Fly foraging mainly color: feed green-yellow white flowers. Overall, Syrphidae less forage for nectar than non-Syrphidae, they be pollen. While exist crowdsourced data, show image data collected through citizen science offer potentially valuable information pollinator-flower augment our understanding