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  <front>
    <journal-meta>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">102</journal-id>
      <journal-id journal-id-type="index">urn:lsid:arphahub.com:pub:73abe0ce-d97c-5d7c-bee5-b8e6e6fe6a17</journal-id>
      <journal-title-group>
        <journal-title xml:lang="en">ARPHA Preprints</journal-title>
        <abbrev-journal-title xml:lang="en">preprints</abbrev-journal-title>
      </journal-title-group>
      <publisher>
        <publisher-name>Pensoft Publishers</publisher-name>
      </publisher>
    </journal-meta>
    <article-meta>
      <article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.3897/arphapreprints.e156050</article-id>
      <article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">156050</article-id>
      <article-categories>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="heading">
          <subject>Methods</subject>
        </subj-group>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="biological_taxon">
          <subject>Plantae</subject>
        </subj-group>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="scientific_subject">
          <subject>Biological Invasions</subject>
          <subject>Species Inventories</subject>
          <subject>Urban ecology</subject>
        </subj-group>
        <subj-group subj-group-type="geographical_area">
          <subject>South Africa</subject>
          <subject> Lesotho and Swaziland</subject>
        </subj-group>
      </article-categories>
      <title-group>
        <article-title>Deriving inventories of non-native plant species from iNaturalist: Insights from urban centres of the Western Cape, South Africa</article-title>
      </title-group>
      <contrib-group content-type="authors">
        <contrib contrib-type="author" corresp="yes">
          <name name-style="western">
            <surname>Gildenhuys</surname>
            <given-names>Christiaan Petrus</given-names>
          </name>
          <email xlink:type="simple">christiaan.gildenhuys@gmail.com</email>
          <uri content-type="orcid">https://orcid.org/0009-0006-5226-3250</uri>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="A1">1</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author" corresp="no">
          <name name-style="western">
            <surname>Potgieter</surname>
            <given-names>Luke</given-names>
          </name>
          <uri content-type="orcid">https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7790-2721</uri>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="A2">2</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author" corresp="no">
          <name name-style="western">
            <surname>Hui</surname>
            <given-names>Cang</given-names>
          </name>
          <uri content-type="orcid">https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3660-8160</uri>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="A1">1</xref>
        </contrib>
        <contrib contrib-type="author" corresp="no">
          <name name-style="western">
            <surname>Richardson</surname>
            <given-names>David Mark</given-names>
          </name>
          <uri content-type="orcid">https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9574-8297</uri>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="A3">3</xref>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="A4">4</xref>
          <xref ref-type="aff" rid="A1">1</xref>
        </contrib>
      </contrib-group>
      <aff id="A1">
        <label>1</label>
        <addr-line content-type="verbatim">Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa</addr-line>
        <institution>Stellenbosch University</institution>
        <addr-line content-type="city">Stellenbosch</addr-line>
        <country>South Africa</country>
      </aff>
      <aff id="A2">
        <label>2</label>
        <addr-line content-type="verbatim">University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada</addr-line>
        <institution>University of Toronto</institution>
        <addr-line content-type="city">Toronto</addr-line>
        <country>Canada</country>
      </aff>
      <aff id="A3">
        <label>3</label>
        <addr-line content-type="verbatim">State University of New York, New Paltz, New Paltz, United States of America</addr-line>
        <institution>State University of New York, New Paltz</institution>
        <addr-line content-type="city">New Paltz</addr-line>
        <country>United States of America</country>
      </aff>
      <aff id="A4">
        <label>4</label>
        <addr-line content-type="verbatim">Centre for Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch , South Africa</addr-line>
        <institution>Centre for Invasion Biology</institution>
        <addr-line content-type="city">Stellenbosch</addr-line>
        <country>South Africa</country>
      </aff>
      <author-notes>
        <fn fn-type="corresp">
          <p>Corresponding author: Christiaan Petrus Gildenhuys (<email xlink:type="simple">christiaan.gildenhuys@gmail.com</email>).</p>
        </fn>
        <fn fn-type="edited-by">
          <p>Academic editor: </p>
        </fn>
      </author-notes>
      <pub-date pub-type="collection">
        <year>2025</year>
      </pub-date>
      <pub-date pub-type="epub">
        <day>16</day>
        <month>04</month>
        <year>2025</year>
      </pub-date>
      <volume>6</volume>
      <uri content-type="arpha" xlink:href="http://openbiodiv.net/1005D088-7E7B-5324-9A12-44872D3CF04B">1005D088-7E7B-5324-9A12-44872D3CF04B</uri>
      <history>
        <date date-type="received">
          <day>16</day>
          <month>04</month>
          <year>2025</year>
        </date>
        <date date-type="accepted">
          <day>16</day>
          <month>04</month>
          <year>2025</year>
        </date>
      </history>
      <permissions>
        <copyright-statement>Christiaan Petrus Gildenhuys, Luke Potgieter, Cang Hui, David Mark Richardson</copyright-statement>
        <license license-type="creative-commons-attribution" xlink:href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" xlink:type="simple">
          <license-p>This is an open access preprint distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.</license-p>
        </license>
      </permissions>
      <abstract>
        <label>Abstract</label>
        <p>Accurate, up-to-date inventories of non-native species are important to document and improve our understanding of biological invasions globally and inform management decisions. Traditional methods for the collation of inventories are time- and resource intensive, and lists become outdated if not regularly updated. The community science platform, iNaturalist, can contribute to the collation of regularly updatable (“living”) inventories of non-native species. However, robust and transparent workflows are needed to optimise data quality to take full advantage of iNaturalist. We present a semi-automated workflow for the collation and completeness assessment of non-native vascular plant inventories from iNaturalist. The workflow is informed by the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) to compare native ranges to a reference area. The utility of the workflow is demonstrated by compiling non-native species inventories of 100 urban centres in the Western Cape province, South Africa. A total of 947 taxa of wild-growing, i.e. casual, naturalised and invasive plants were observed in these urban centres which showed varying levels of sample completeness. Most small towns had too few records for a completeness assessment. Larger urban centres and those near the coast were typically better sampled. This work highlights the potential for iNaturalist to construct non-native species inventories given sufficient coverage and thorough curation.</p>
      </abstract>
      <funding-group>
        <award-group>
          <funding-source>
            <named-content content-type="funder_name">Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada</named-content>
            <named-content content-type="funder_identifier">501100000038</named-content>
            <named-content content-type="funder_ror">https://ror.org/01h531d29</named-content>
            <named-content content-type="funder_doi">http://doi.org/10.13039/501100000038</named-content>
          </funding-source>
        </award-group>
        <award-group>
          <funding-source>
            <named-content content-type="funder_name">National Research Foundation</named-content>
            <named-content content-type="funder_identifier">501100001321</named-content>
            <named-content content-type="funder_ror">https://ror.org/05s0g1g46</named-content>
            <named-content content-type="funder_doi">http://doi.org/10.13039/501100001321</named-content>
          </funding-source>
        </award-group>
        <funding-statement>Centre for Invasion Biology&#13;
Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme ()</funding-statement>
      </funding-group>
    </article-meta>
  </front>
</article>
