Dataset Information

Comparisons of Citizen Science Data-Gathering Approaches to Evaluate Urban Butterfly Diversity.

ABSTRACT: By 2030, ten percent of earth's landmass will be occupied by cities. Urban environments can be home to many plants and animals, but surveying and estimating biodiversity in these spaces is complicated by a heterogeneous built environment where access and landscaping are highly variable due to human activity. Citizen science approaches may be the best way to assess urban biodiversity, but little is known about their relative effectiveness and efficiency. Here, we compare three techniques for acquiring data on butterfly (Lepidoptera: Rhopalocera) species richness: trained volunteer Pollard walks, Malaise trapping with expert identification, and crowd-sourced iNaturalist observations. A total of 30 butterfly species were observed; 27 (90%) were recorded by Pollard walk observers, 18 (60%) were found in Malaise traps, and 22 (73%) were reported by iNaturalist observers. Pollard walks reported the highest butterfly species richness, followed by iNaturalist and then Malaise traps during the four-month time period. Pollard walks also had significantly higher species diversity than Malaise traps.

SUBMITTER: Prudic KL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6316785 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Comparisons of Citizen Science Data-Gathering Approaches to Evaluate Urban Butterfly Diversity.

Prudic Kathleen L KL Oliver Jeffrey C JC Brown Brian V BV Long Elizabeth C EC

Insects 20181206 4

By 2030, ten percent of earth's landmass will be occupied by cities. Urban environments can be home to many plants and animals, but surveying and estimating biodiversity in these spaces is complicated by a heterogeneous built environment where access and landscaping are highly variable due to human activity. Citizen science approaches may be the best way to assess urban biodiversity, but little is known about their relative effectiveness and efficiency. Here, we compare three techniques for acqu ...[more]

PMID: 30563191

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Project description:BackgroundOver the past 50 years, Southeast Asia has suffered the greatest losses of biodiversity of any tropical region in the world. Malaysia is a biodiversity hotspot in the heart of Southeast Asia with roughly the same number of mammal species, three times the number of butterfly species, but only 4% of the land area of Australia. Consequently, in Malaysia, there is an urgent need for biodiversity monitoring and also public engagement with wildlife to raise awareness of biodiversity loss. Citizen science is "on the rise" globally and can make valuable contributions to long-term biodiversity monitoring, but perhaps more importantly, involving the general public in science projects can raise public awareness and promote engagement. Butterflies are often the focus of citizen science projects due to their charisma and familiarity and are particularly valuable "ambassadors" of biodiversity conservation for public outreach.New informationHere we present the data from our citizen science project, the first "Peninsular Malaysia Butterfly Count". Participants were asked to go outdoors on June 6, 2015, and (non-lethally) sample butterfly legs for species identification through DNA barcoding. Fifty-seven citizens responded to our adverts and registered to take part in the butterfly count with many registering on behalf of groups. Collectively the participants sampled 220 butterfly legs from 26 mostly urban and suburban sampling localities. These included our university campus, a highschool, several public parks and private residences. On the basis of 192 usable DNA barcodes, 43 species were sampled by the participants. The most sampled species was Appias olferna, followed by Junonia orithya and Zizina otis. Twenty-two species were only sampled once, five were only sampled twice, and four were only sampled three times. Three DNA barcodes could not be assigned species names. The sampled butterflies revealed that widely distributed, cosmopolitan species, often those recently arrived to the peninsula or with documented "invasive" potential, dominated the habitat types sampled by the participants. Data from this first Butterfly Count helps establish a baseline from which we can monitor the patterns and changes in butterfly communities in Peninsular Malaysia.

Project description:BackgroundCitizen science approaches, which involve members of the public as active collaborators in scientific research, are increasingly being recognized for their potential benefits in chronic disease prevention. However, understanding the potential applicability, feasibility and impacts of these approaches is necessary if they are to be more widely used. This study aimed to synthesize research that has applied and evaluated citizen science approaches in chronic disease prevention and identify key questions, gaps, and opportunities to inform future work in this field.MethodsWe searched six databases (Scopus, Medline, Embase, PsycInfo, PubMed, and CINAHL) in January 2022 to identify articles on the use of citizen science in prevention. We extracted and synthesized data on key characteristics of citizen science projects, including topics, aims and level of involvement of citizen scientists, as well as methods and findings of evaluations of these projects.ResultsEighty-one articles reported on citizen science across a variety of health issues, predominantly physical activity and/or nutrition. Projects primarily aimed to identify problems from the perspective of community members; generate and prioritize solutions; develop, test or evaluate interventions; or build community capacity. Most projects were small-scale, and few were co-produced with policy or practice stakeholders. While around half of projects included an evaluation component, overall, there was a lack of robust, in-depth evaluations of the processes and impacts of citizen science projects.ConclusionsCitizen science approaches are increasingly being used in chronic disease prevention to identify and prioritize community-focused solutions, mobilize support and advocacy, and empower communities to take action to support their health and wellbeing. However, to realize the potential of this approach more attention needs to be paid to demonstrating the feasibility of using citizen science approaches at scale, and to rigorous evaluation of impacts from using these approaches for the diverse stakeholders involved.

Project description:Citizen science-the involvement of volunteers in data collection, analysis and interpretation-simultaneously supports research and public engagement with science, and its profile is rapidly rising. Citizen science represents a diverse range of approaches, but until now this diversity has not been quantitatively explored. We conducted a systematic internet search and discovered 509 environmental and ecological citizen science projects. We scored each project for 32 attributes based on publicly obtainable information and used multiple factor analysis to summarise this variation to assess citizen science approaches. We found that projects varied according to their methodological approach from 'mass participation' (e.g. easy participation by anyone anywhere) to 'systematic monitoring' (e.g. trained volunteers repeatedly sampling at specific locations). They also varied in complexity from approaches that are 'simple' to those that are 'elaborate' (e.g. provide lots of support to gather rich, detailed datasets). There was a separate cluster of entirely computer-based projects but, in general, we found that the range of citizen science projects in ecology and the environment showed continuous variation and cannot be neatly categorised into distinct types of activity. While the diversity of projects begun in each time period (pre 1990, 1990-99, 2000-09 and 2010-13) has not increased, we found that projects tended to have become increasingly different from each other as time progressed (possibly due to changing opportunities, including technological innovation). Most projects were still active so consequently we found that the overall diversity of active projects (available for participation) increased as time progressed. Overall, understanding the landscape of citizen science in ecology and the environment (and its change over time) is valuable because it informs the comparative evaluation of the 'success' of different citizen science approaches. Comparative evaluation provides an evidence-base to inform the future development of citizen science activities.

Dataset Information

Comparisons of Citizen Science Data-Gathering Approaches to Evaluate Urban Butterfly Diversity.

Publications

Comparisons of Citizen Science Data-Gathering Approaches to Evaluate Urban Butterfly Diversity.

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