The latest weapon in the war against invasive pests might be – you!
A new report has identified that over a 12-month period, the alerts from members of the public who placed images on one website resulted in notifications for more than 150 species to 32 different agencies across Australia.
Now two independent teams of scientists have connected the rise of citizen science apps and human curiosity to earlier detection of invasive species, and stronger biosecurity.
In an article published this month in Environmental Entomology, a team of North American scientists highlights the historical role of the public in surveillance. They argue that people’s curiosity and ability to recognise novelty in nature can be leveraged with the widespread adoption of digital cameras and citizen science apps.
“More people involved will create more raw observations, and more raw observations increase the probability of early detection of something important,” say co-authors Amanda Roe of the Canadian Forest Service, Leigh Greenwood of The Nature Conservancy and David Coyle of Clemson University in the US.
Accidental introduction of non-native species is a consequence of global trade and international travel. If a species becomes established in a new place and causes harm to humans or the local environment, they are considered invasive.
Experts estimate that the cost of biological invasions exceeds that of natural disasters, particularly when loss of native biodiversity and destruction of cultural traditions are considered.
Biosecurity encompasses prevention, detection, action on new introductions and management of established invasives. Surveillance focuses on detection when the chances of containing or eradicating the invasive species are better.
Roe and colleagues recommend iNaturalist or Observation.org to people interested in getting involved. They argue that scientists and government agencies should also respond by monitoring citizen science apps, creating alert systems and designing ways to mine public data while following ethical principles.
“If members of the public answer the call to share more insect and arthropod observations of all kinds, entomologists must be ready to use them,” say Roe, Greenwood and Coyle.
Citizen science and biosecurity in Australia
Australia is no stranger to invasive species, which range from cane toads to fire ants to prickly pears. Unfortunately, their conspicuous impact reflects the vulnerability of Australia’s native ecosystems. As a result, Australia has some of the world’s most stringent biosecurity measures, particularly at points of entry.
In an article published in June in the peer-review journal, CSIRO Wildlife Research, a team presented an example of how the country is already using citizen science data for biosecurity surveillance.
Andrew Turley, coauthor on the study, is a biosecurity analyst at the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), a biodiversity database that aggregates photos from a wide variety of citizen science apps. This includes iNaturalist as well as Australia-specific FeralScan, NatureMapr and WeedScan.
“One of the really powerful things around citizen science is that a lot of the species we’re on the lookout for are not in Australia yet,” Turley tells Cosmos. “We don’t necessarily have that general awareness or expertise of people IDing them. Whereas when you have tools like iNaturalist that have that global user base… you’ve got people with expertise that can look at these detections.”
Increasingly, apps like iNaturalist are incorporating AI to identify the living things in photographs, which can then be verified by human experts.
Turley and colleagues, have built the Biosecurity Alerts Service, an system based on detections logged in the ALA. Crucially for different state and local authorities, the alerts can be customised based on location of interest and species of interest.
Turley and coauthors detail several case studies where citizen science activity alerted authorities to invasive individuals, which were then successfully controlled.
“Biosecurity departments have very limited resources,” says Turley. “This is providing the general surveillance that biosecurity departments otherwise would simply not be able to do.”
When asked what citizen science platform he would recommend to Cosmos readers, Turley suggested picking an app that piques curiosity and having fun with it. (Readers interested in iNaturalist might benefit from this guide.)
“This is really capitalising on the general interest that people have in nature and recording nature around them,” says Turley. “The invasive species is a by-product of that. It’s a low likelihood but very high impact detection when they are finding these invasives.”
He adds, “If you see something odd, if you see something you don’t normally, take a photo of it. Share it.”
