Taxonomy was once the domain of white-coated scientists with years of university training. While this expertise is still important, everyday Australian citizens are increasingly helping to identify species through science apps. Rapid advances in smartphone and tablet cameras are helping to popularize this activity.
Biodiversity researchers are calling on citizen scientists to contribute data to fill information gaps, identify species declines, and inform management decisions. And young researchers – some as young as schoolchildren – are stepping in to help.
Stories like the experience of 14-year-old Luke Downey of Canberra inspire others to record and upload images to a biodiversity database. Earlier this year, Luke found a rare beetle, Catarina testes, which was last seen in the act in 1955. Their observations were recorded in the Canberra Nature Map, an online repository of rare plants and animals.
I put a macro lens on my smartphone, and I was shock
My own motivation for becoming a citizen scientist was an inexpensive macro lens that is now permanently affixed to my smartphone. This small portable lens takes pictures of small subjects at very close distances. (Some newer smartphones have built-in lenses that can do this.)
I caught the 'bug' of taking detailed close-up pictures, such as the underside of stingless native bees, Tetragonal carbon aria, communicating with each other and admiring - or mining - their way. Sharing pictures I've taken has turned other people into this type of citizen science.
Anyone can now take close-ups of insects, plants and other species to contribute to the citizen science database. The clarity of these images means that experts can often determine the species, adding an understanding of distribution and numbers to aid in ground conservation.
Such activities are included in the B&B Highway Program run by planting seeds Projects. The program encourages school students in New South Wales and Victoria to participate in a citizen science project. It is affiliated with the International Naturalist Biodiversity Network and Database and CSI RO's Atlas of Living Australia.
Students are using smartphones and tablets in school playgrounds to capture extraordinary images of insects less than 1 cm long or the tiny details of flower parts. There is an online dashboard where students can view and share observations and knowledge. These images then contribute to our knowledge of species distribution and density.
Focus on pollinator
The B&B Highways Program has developed a biodiversity based curriculum with the NSW Department of Education. The project includes tree planting and constructed housing in schools to create regenerative corridors. More than 60 hubs are targeted by the middle of 2022 to help combat the alarming decline in pollinators in Australia and around the world.
The B&B Highway Program provides training for teachers and students. While students are often more comfortable with smart devices and their camera functions than their teachers, school administrators are given separate instructions for setting up a Naturalist account and uploading observations. Having an account at the school ensures that students' identities are protected and that all comments are listed as schools.
Children under the age of 13 cannot create an account or engage directly with the many citizen science communities, including Naturalist. This means that an adult needs to upload the overview.
An observation is considered to be research grade if at least two site users agree on taxonomic species level identification. Comments on Naturalist are shared with Atlas of Living Australia.
Taxonomists regularly express concern over the lack of data on the distribution and density of insect pollinators. The addition of 124 Australian species to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species this month means that urgent strategies - including citizen science - are needed to help with regeneration.
Urban observations are important because about 30 percent of Australia's threatened species are found in cities. Yet about 5 percent of citizen science projects in Australia are urban based. With three-quarters of Australia's 23.4 million people now living in a capital city, citizen science has enormous potential.
The following tips, taken from the Naturalist teacher's guide, will help get you started.
*Take recognizable photos. Try filling the frame with your subject. It may help to use your hand to hold the flower or plant steady, but make sure the plant isn't dangerous.
* Take multiple pictures. Many organisms, especially plants and insects, cannot be identified from a single photograph to the species level. Take multiple pictures from different angles. For plants, pictures of flowers, fruits and leaves are helpful for ID.
Pay attention to wild animals. In general, the Nat community is more interested in wildlife. Members respond more to photos of weeds and insects than to roses and hamsters grown in cages.
* Pay attention to metadata. This is a picture with information about when and where a photo was taken (if location services are on). Screenshots of photographs will lose this data, which may result in incorrect data entry. Be wary of places and dates that don't make sense. If your device's time and date settings are incorrect, the data will be incorrect.
*Don't feel pressured to review research grades. Many organisms cannot be identified to the level of species using photographic evidence alone, so their observations may never achieve research grade.
*Be aware of copyrights. Images should not be copied from books or the Internet to illustrate what you saw. Post only your photos.
*check out. Seek is an educational tool built on Naturalist. It doesn't actually post observations to Naturalist, but provides tools like automatic species identification (when possible) and nature journaling.
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