Using Citizen Science to survey farmland insects.
Citizen science programmes are a useful tool in increasing public interest in biological recording and native wildlife, but also have great potential to provide large, geographically widespread datasets. The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), Linking Environment And Food (LEAF), and Syngenta (the 2011 sponsors of the NBN Conference) recently collaborated on the Pollinator Survey, a national project enlisting the public in surveying insects on farmland.
Participants were asked to make five minute observations of two habitats; crop and non-crop. Insect abundance on flowers was recorded under the following categories; ants, bees, beetles, butterflies, flies, ladybirds and other insects. Percentage floral cover of the two habitats, and the weather during the survey was also noted.
33 farms across 21 counties took part, allowing a broad range of fields to be sampled; cereals, oilseed rape, beans, pasture with and without animals, other vegetables, fallow fields, flowering field margins, hedgerows, and tracks with long and short vegetation. On 21 farms, an ecologist was present to assist the public with the survey and to collect data themselves.
556 completed forms were returned, 68 from ecologists. Over 15000 insects were recorded; flies were the most abundant group followed by bees, while butterfly numbers were very low. The data will be used to investigate the importance of the different habitats sampled in supporting insect communities. It may also reveal effects of local landscape context and geography. If the project is repeated next year as planned, the dataset will form a baseline for annual monitoring, helping to address larger issues such as the impact of climate change.
Lucy Cornwell
Indicia
If you are interested in citizen science and would like to set up an online recording project remember you can use Indicia, the online recording toolkit, and find out more about iRecord (which uses Indicia) in our news story about its launch.