declining fireflies and citizen science revisited
I observed this Photinis pyralis in my backyard this evening. I recorded the appropriate data (time, temperature, habitat, lat/long, behavior, flash color and pulse) with Firefly Watch (see image below) - but how do I associate this image, which had to uploaded to flickr, of the actual specimen with the observations at the Boston Museum of Science? And maybe I overlooked it, but I didn't see anyway to provide a determination in the data upload form. The specimen was chilled in my freezer for 30 seconds or so, by the way. He recovered nicely and was flashing again in my yard 10 minutes later.
This month's National Geographic has a small piece on declining fireflies (Coleoptera: Lampyridae) that piqued my interest - another example citizen scientists working together to accrue critical distributional data. The main site for recording these observations is Boston's Museum of Science Firefly watch (covered by many already).
I mentioned a couple of projects like this before (e.g., in my Lost Ladybug Project post) and even have one of my own in development that involves North Carolina insects (it'll be awhile though!). With so many examples to peruse I thought it would be worthwhile to list what I think are successful components of my favorite insect-related citizen science projects:
- Emphasize taxa that people can see, identify, and relate to. The Lost Ladybug Project certainly does this. Everyone knows what a coccinellid is, and their conspicuous nature (the bright red/white/black ones, anyway) and associated folklore make them easy subjects for citizen scientists. Ladybird beetles also perform important environmental services that most people can appreciate. The same statement could be made about Firefly Watch, BeeSpotter (collecting data on the storied honey and bumble bees), and the Great Pollinator Project (collecting data on "honey bees, bumble bees, large carpenter bees, and metallic green bees"). There are several projects that observe and count Odonata and Papilionoidea, which are good targets to draw people in. Alas, I think a Chalcidoidea count should probably be reserved for those citizens who crave an extraordinary challenge, and any conceived Aphid Watch should be reserved for criminal punition.
- Clearly define your mission. Discuss the problem (invasive? declining?) or research question (affected by global warming?) and how my observations will help science understand and maybe solve the problem or otherwise address the question. Too many projects - and even one is too many, in my opinion - forget to explain why these data are needed. These are missed opportunities to garner appreciation for the relevance of science.
- Make data submission easy. Spider WebWatch excels in this department - just look at this magnificent data upload demo page, with its point-and-shoot Google Map and a free text (with WYSIWYG editor!) observation notes box. Unrivaled.
- Make it fun. The Encyclopedia of Life knows exactly how to do this with the EoL flickr group. Flickr is loaded with fantastic biological observations, and the EoL group knows how to draw these photographers in with fun photo contests (current theme is 'nocturnal'). Your photos reach a broad audience and help illustrate taxon pages, and the information associated with your images (tags, where and when you took the image, etc.) provide critical data that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Other projects (though it's not clear how active they are) that include elements of competitive fun include Discover Life's Golderod Challenge and Ant Hunt.
- Provide instant gratification. I want to see my contributions - photos and data points - easily and immediately. I also want to see data that my citizen colleagues submitted on the main page or otherwise readily linked from the index. Something like the EoL flickr images map, Firefly Watch's view and explore data, or BeeSpotter's bee spottings.
Instant gratification - my firefly observation appeared immediately on this clickable, zoomable map. I wish we could now get lampyrid observations from areas of the world where dramatic declines in lampyrid faunas are not anecdotal.
Thanks for putting this post together....I'll pass it along to others.
Posted by Darrin OBrien on May 27, 2009 at 06:12 AM EDT #
Hi,
We have just added your latest post "declining fireflies and citizen science revisited" to our Directory of Science . You can check the inclusion of the post here . We are delighted to invite you to submit all your future posts to the directory and get a huge base of visitors to your website.
Warm Regards
Scienz.info Team
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Posted by marie on June 12, 2009 at 05:48 AM EDT #