What the citizen scientists found in shoreline survey

SO what did 357 people find in almost three years of searching the North East coastline? Lots, apparently.

The volunteers, dubbed “citizen scientists”, are part of a Newcastle University project to build up a baseline picture of the species which live in the inter-tidal shoreline of the region.

... The survey participants were given a long list of coastal marine species and asked to choose five which they would look for on regular trips to the coast.

A total of 134,000 records have been amassed so far of what was – and was not – found, covering more than 200 species.

The aims of the project are to produce an up-to-date record of marine intertidal species records along the coast which will feed into management strategies and provide the baseline for detecting environmental change, and to raise awareness of marine issues.

“The survey is providing good data of species against which we can measure changes in the future, such as how climate change may effect species,” said project officer Dr Heather Sugden, who is based at the university’s Dove Marine Laboratory in Cullercoats.

“Volunteers came forward mainly by word of mouth. People are really interested in, and care about, the coast in the North East and wanted to be involved.”

Finds have included a very rare, for the North East, colony of stalked jellyfish, with 190 discovered at Beadnell in Northumberland.

The Journal

27 Apr 2013

T Henderson

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Thank You!

Thank you for spreading the word about the bird mortality events occurring along the US' East coast and for asking your friends and colleagues to share their sightings of dead and sick birds to the Wildlife Health Event Reporter (WHER), www.wher.org.  You made a difference. We have seen an increase in reports to WHER as well as the addition of new members.  While these incidences are saddening, through the eyes of your reports to WHER, researchers like Drs. Ellis and Courchesne at SEANET/Tufts are gaining a better understanding of what is happening on the ground.

And hey! Non-US East-coasters, oh no - we are not leaving you out! WHER can accept observations from around the globe and your reports are just as important. Take a minute and consider the number of researchers who are working on wildlife disease issues and compare that to the number of people who during their day to day actives come across sick or dead wildlife. OK if you did the math, you would agree that comparably there are many more citizens.  Rallied together, that is an amazing corps who can be the 'boots on the ground', for researchers and other wildlife professionals who are on the alert for wildlife health events.

Your observations are valuable! Each report expands our baseline knowledge and understanding of disease ecology! 

Thanks from the WDIN Team!
Questions/problems with WHER? Email wher@wdin.org 

Butterflies get a hand from citizen scientists

Satterfield is recruiting “citizen scientists” — ordinary people with an interest in collecting scientific information — for her study monitoring monarch butterflies. In particular she’s looking at a monarch parasite called Ophryocystis elektroscirrha or Oe for short.

It’s a microscopic, single-celled organism first discovered in monarchs and queen butterflies in the 1960s. It’s harmless to humans and other animals, but it’s tough on these orange and black beauties.

Infected females transmit the parasite to the milkweed plants where they lay their eggs. When caterpillars emerge, they unwittingly eat the spores. Sometimes they have trouble developing properly. Sometimes they survive to adulthood with the infection, but are still weakened.

“We know they can’t fly as well, as fast or as far as healthy monarchs,” Satterfield said.

Savannah Morning News

21 Apr 2013

M Landers

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Citizen scientists stretch their wings and research dollars

Seneca Kristjonsdottir, left, who studies bees, and Colorado master
gardener Tina Ligon look at different species of Colorado bees with
magnifying glasses before a "Bees' Needs" meeting last month
at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History.
(Jamie Cotten, Special to The Denver Post)

The birds and the bees naturally excite interest. But people were jam-packed into the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History one night in late March — extra seats crammed at the last minute behind fossil-display cases — as two scientists recruited them for a research project on native bee species.

CU is asking citizen scientists to help gather data about the roughly 150 species of bees that nest locally in any little cavity or tunnel in woody material — dead trees, fallen logs, hollowed-out twigs.

The crowded hall was, forgive the expression, buzzing with anticipation, as Dr. Alexandra Rose, the university's citizen-scientist coordinator, said CU was "conning the public into doing our work for us."

The public didn't mind.

Denver Post

07 Apr 2013

E Draper

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Marine Diversity Study Proves Value of Citizen Science

Citizen science surveys compare well with traditional scientific methods when it comes to monitoring species biodiversity -- according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

Research published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution shows that methods to record marine diversity used by amateurs returned results consistent with techniques favoured by peer-reviewed science.

The findings give weight to the growing phenomenon of citizen science, which sees data crowd-sourced from an army of avid twitchers, divers, walkers and other wildlife enthusiasts.

The field study compared methods used by 'citizen' SCUBA divers with those used by professional scientists, to measure the variety of fish species in three Caribbean sites.

...While the traditional scientific survey revealed sightings of 106 different types of fish, the volunteer technique detected greater marine diversity with a total of 137 in the same waters.

Science Daily - www.sciencedaily.com

12 Mar 2013

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Journal Reference

Ben G. Holt et al. Comparing diversity data collected using a protocol designed for volunteers with results from a professional alternative. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2013; DOI: 10.1111/2041-210X.12031

Effort enlists citizens to shine light on light pollution

Light may be one of the most overlooked environmental threats to the Great Lakes, according to a project that recently mapped them.

Researchers with the Great Lakes Environmental Assessment and Mapping Project mapped environmental stressors to the Great Lakes, including light pollution.

Excessive lighting disrupts wildlife habits and habitats, said David Allan, a professor with the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan who led the project.

... Reaching out to people everywhere, including the Great Lakes region, the GLOBE at Night project is attempting to build a global database of light pollution through citizen-science.

“In cases like this, no one scientist can get all the data they need,” Said Connie Walker, an associate scientist and senior science education specialist with the GLOBE at Night program. “That’s the nature of citizen-science. It’s the best way to involve people in science and get a lot of data from a lot of places in a short amount of time.”

Great Lakes Echo - greatlakesecho.org

13 Feb 2013

J Dau

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How Your Vacation Photos Could Help Save the Freaking Whale Shark

Prior to the 1980s, there were fewer than 350 confirmed sightings of whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) worldwide. But by next year, that annoying girl on your Facebook feed who seems to do nothing but go on vacation will probably have a whole album full of whale shark pics. And that’s just what might save the beautiful bastards from extinction.

Whale sharks are thought to be quite rare, but scientists have long struggled to estimate their true numbers. Individual animals can be identified through unique markings behind each gill and an inventory of scars, but the fact that the creatures seem to migrate thousands of miles over the course of a year makes it difficult to keep pace with them. (Help us help you, whale sharks.) They are officially listed as facing a high risk of extinction in the wild, where they are vulnerable to collisions with boats and lovers of shark fin soup.

Fortunately, tourists love to take pictures of sea monsters. It probably helps that the world’s largest fish enjoys warm waters, slow surface swimming, and a diet that looks nothing like a human being. And while they react when touched, whale sharks usually pay little mind to swimmers and divers, likely because their massive size—they’re about the length of a school bus and weigh 20 tons—means they fail to see us as a threat. (Hubris: not just for humans.) This matter-of-factness also means any old tourist with a decent point-and-click can capture clear enough images to use for identification.

Thanks to a study by Tim Davies, a researcher at Imperial College London, scientists are now confident these amateur images can be used to identify the whereabouts of individual whale sharks on a global scale. Utilizing pattern recognition software and photo management tools, crowd-sourced pics from sites like Flickr were successfully used to obtain IDs in 85 percent of cases. The ability to recognize and log sightings of individual whale sharks is huge because it allows scientists in, say, Australia to keep tabs on animals that appear locally for a only a few weeks a year. (Over the course of 36 months, one whale shark took a world tour of over 8,000 miles.) Checking positive IDs against other images also gives us a more accurate representation of just how many of these filter-feeding crazies are really out there. Plus, flipping through the ECOCEAN Whale Shark Photo-identification Library is like a marine biologist’s version of Facebook. (You’ve gotta see how much weight #716AC put on this winter!)

Slate - www.slate.com

12 Feb 2013

J Bittel

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