Corresponding author: Alessandro Campanaro (
Academic editor: P. Audisio
Citizen science, the engagement of people in a research project, has grown rapidly in recent years, also for mapping of species of conservation interest. The Life Project “Monitoring Insects with Public Participation” (
Campanaro A, Hardersen S, Redolfi De Zan L, Antonini G, Bardiani M, Maura M, Maurizi E, Mosconi F, Zauli A, Bologna MA, Roversi PF, Sabbatini Peverieri G, Mason F (2017) Analyses of occurrence data of protected insect species collected by citizens in Italy. In: Carpaneto GM, Audisio P, Bologna MA, Roversi PF, Mason F (Eds) Guidelines for the Monitoring of the Saproxylic Beetles protected in Europe. Nature Conservation 20: 265–297.
Citizen Science (hereafter
The
Urban: butterflies monitoring in the cities of Chicago, New York and Tokyo (
National: butterfly monitoring in Germany (
Continental: Monarch Larva Monitoring Project (
Moreover,
The effort required from citizens for the insect monitoring varies from simple observations to the application of a standard monitoring protocol. Examples for
Despite the great number of projects aimed at insect monitoring, compared with the total number of species considered in such programmes, invertebrates have been under-sampled by
In this context, the LIFE11 NAT/IT/000252 Project – Monitoring of Insects with Public Participation (
The
The project used information and communication technology (
The objectives of this paper are two-fold: (i) to describe the different strategies adopted to engage people in the LIFE project
Engaging citizen volunteers to monitor and manage natural resources, track species at risk and conserve protected areas is increasing, especially by non-governmental organisations. The contribution of volunteers to natural sciences is not new; in museums, there are hundreds of millions of plants and animals specimens which have been collected by volunteers. However, with
Different strategies were applied to engage the public from 2014 to 2016. The
Number of dissemination activities and number of citizens reached from 2014 to 2016.
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Activities | Citizens | Activities | Citizens | Activities | Citizens | Activities | Citizens | |
Seminars and workshops | 25 | 642 | 31 | 2100 | 26 | 652 | 82 | 3394 |
Divulgation events | 19 | 715 | 20 | 968 | 18 | 1539 | 57 | 3222 |
Conferences | 5 | 130 | 2 | 140 | 3 | 0 | 10 | 270 |
Guided tours | 8 | 257 | 54 | 1496 | 4 | 170 | 66 | 1923 |
Educational activities at school | 58 | 1923 | 70 | 1862 | 60 | 1370 | 188 | 5155 |
Total | 115 | 3667 | 177 | 6566 | 111 | 3731 | 403 | 13964 |
Media-related dissemination performed from 2014 to 2016.
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Documentaries | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
Press releases | 9 | 12 | 13 | 34 |
Magazines and newspaper articles | 42 | 37 | 48 | 127 |
Interviews in TV or Radio | 4 | 5 | 4 | 13 |
Total | 56 | 55 | 65 | 176 |
Two main systems were used to transmit records of the target species: (i) the project website (
To report a sighting, the citizen scientist had to complete an online form (via website or via app) which included mandatory and optional fields. The mandatory fields were: nickname, e-mail address, geographic coordinates (inserted manually or automatically), date and hour of sighting, photograph of the target species and the name of the species observed (although a field named “Unidentified” for uncertain data was also available). The optional fields were: location information, insect position, habitat and additional notes.
According to the recommendations provided by
Once a submission was correctly completed, the system sent a notification to the e-mail address of the citizen scientist who recorded the species and to the specific expert. Based on the data provided, the expert assigned one of five different statuses to the record: (i) confirmed (the species has been correctly identified by the citizen and all the other information provided were plausible), (ii) rejected (the photo showed none of the target species or the other information was implausible), (iii) not publishable (the specimens was part of an entomological collection, the same specimens had been already reported, wrong geographical coordinates, the picture was not clear), (iv) interesting but not target (the picture refers to a species of conservation interest but none of the target species, e.g.
Faunistic records were downloaded from the
To investigate the phenology of the target species, two types of analysis were carried out. Firstly, the records for each species were assigned to three 10-day periods in each month and expressed as percentages. The resulting histograms were plotted. In a second step, the change in the phenology with increasing altitude was analysed. To do this, all records of the various species were pooled for the six altitudinal ranges (0–400; 401–800; 801–1,200; 1,201–1,600; 1,601–2000 and 2,001–2,400) and dates were transformed into day of the year (e.g. 1st of January=1). Subsequently for each altitudinal range, a boxplot was created for the pooled days of the year and the median was calculated, defining the day which represented the peak of activity for each altitudinal range. To compare the length of the activity period of the various species at different altitudes, the days were calculated between first and third quartile which define the time when the central 50% of observations were carried out. Phenological data for the different ranges were analysed with the Kruskal-Wallis rank sum test, as implemented in R version 3.1.3 (R Development Core Team 2010). Phenological changes with increasing altitude were only calculated for those species for which the
A total number of 2,308 reports were transmitted to the project database. Most of these reports (n=1,653, 71.6%) were submitted via the website, whereas only 28.4% of the reports (n=655) were submitted via the app (Table
Percentage ratio of reports submitted via web and via app for year (considering the sightings from 2014 to 2016).
Distribution map of confirmed records of the target species collected by citizen scientists during the LIFE
Percentage ratio between the five status categories of the reports (considering sighting date between 2014 and 2016) submitted via web and via app.
Number of records submitted via web, via app and both, for each year and for date of transmission.
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2014 | 117 | 1 | 118 | 350 | 84 | 434 | 467 | 85 | 552 |
2015 | 58 | 6 | 64 | 513 | 210 | 723 | 571 | 216 | 787 |
2016 | 23 | 1 | 24 | 592 | 353 | 945 | 615 | 354 | 969 |
All reporting date | 198 | 8 | 206 | 1455 | 647 | 2102 | 1653 | 655 | 2308 |
Number of records submitted via web, via app and both, for the 5 status categories and for date of sightings.
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Confirmed | 164 | 4 | 168 | 1169 | 354 | 1523 | 1333 | 358 | 1691 |
Not publishable | 6 | 0 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 12 | 13 | 5 | 18 |
Not Target | 9 | 0 | 9 | 46 | 61 | 107 | 55 | 61 | 116 |
Rejected | 19 | 4 | 23 | 200 | 207 | 407 | 219 | 211 | 430 |
Pending | 0 | 0 | 0 | 33 | 20 | 53 | 33 | 20 | 53 |
Tot. | 198 | 8 | 206 | 1455 | 647 | 2102 | 1653 | 655 | 2308 |
The species most commonly recorded was
Number of discarded and confirmed records for the nine-target species reported by citizens.
Number of records per year of the nine-target species reported by citizens.
Percentage of records submitted via website and via app for the nine-target species.
A total of 695 citizens submitted at least one record during the three years analysed and the number of participants increased each year (2014: n=182; 2015: n=295; 2016: n=335). Most of the citizens (n=603) transmitted data in only one year, whereas a few provided records during more than one year (n=92). Most of the citizens (n=600) transmitted one to three records, a smaller part of citizens (n=68) submitted 4–10 records each, another group of citizens (n=34) submitted 11–62 records and 1 citizen transmitted 132 records. Figure
Relationship between the number of provided records and the number of citizens.
The average difference between the two methods for obtaining altitudes for all points was 8.1 m ±8.8 m standard deviation (SD). The altitudinal distribution of the various species, as revealed by
Altitudinal distribution of the target species, as revealed by the citizen science data. The distributions are expressed as percentages of the total number of records and are presented with the altitudinal distribution of the Italian territory as background.
The present study represents the first application in Italy of the
The
The preferred method for transmitting records was the website, even if the percentage of data sent via the app was increasing. One possible reason for this prevalence for using the website could be that photographs of reasonable quality of the target species were easier to take with cameras and a macro lens. The inbuilt cameras of smartphones were less suitable for this purpose. However, the increasing use of the app
The high rate of correct validations (73%) confirmed that the majority of the data collected by volunteers were correct. Similarly,
The analysis of the participation of citizens in terms of the number of records provided, showed that a small share of participants contributed with many data and many contributed with few data. In other words, a large group of citizens occasionally contributed to the project (providing one to three records) and a small group of citizens contributed constantly (providing dozens of records). This pattern was also reported by
The records collected with the
Phenology of the target species, as revealed by the citizen science data.
The comparison between traditional biological recording schemes and
Phenology of
The analysis performed on records collected by citizens showed that the patterns of altitudinal distributions for all species differed from that of the Italian land-surface. This means that the species were not observed randomly, but records followed species-specific altitudinal distributions. These patterns might be influenced by different frequencies of visits of citizens to the various altitudes, but these data do not permit this investigation. The abundant data for
Phenology of
The citizen scientists reported
Phenology of
The lowest and highest altitude in meters where the target species were recorded according to the citizen science data.
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3 | 1,836 |
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6 | 1,065 |
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2 | 1,147 |
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2 | 1,870 |
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3 | 1,997 |
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179 | 1,526 |
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722 | 2,252 |
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1 | 1,482 |
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90 | 860 |
The altitudinal data derived by the records for
Phenology of
Although
Based on data recorded by citizens, the longhorn species
The observations of
The butterfly
Volunteers reported sightings of
The two butterflies
In all investigated cases, the peak of activity was observed later with increasing altitude and it was delayed by 10 days on average when moving upwards by 400 m. Additionally, for the two cases where the
Generally, the data collected non-systematically by volunteers allowed altitudinal distribution and phenology to be analysed, at least for those species for which a minimum number of records had been collected. Similarly,
Altogether, our results confirm that the
The present work was developed within the EU project LIFE11 NAT/IT/000252, with the contribution of the LIFE financial instrument of the European Union. Authors thank all the
We would like to thank Stefano Martellos and an anonymous referee, for helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.
The present work was not possible without the citizens who have sent their data; they are registered with the following names or nicknames: _milo_, A. 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With the contribution of the LIFE financial instrument of the European Union.