Excerpt: Phone-wielding and bare-armed, I follow Scott Edmunds and Mendel Wong to a small park in the Mid-Levels area of Hong Kong Island, where a dengue outbreak occurred last year. We hit the jackpot within five minutes – a swarm of mosquitoes around a tree. With his phone, Wong snaps a picture of one that…

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As citizen science methodologies mature and number of participants increases, it is becoming more possible to understand the role and necessity of experts in relation to data quality. This article is a great example of how expertise can be assessed and utilized. — LFF — Summary: Citizen science data are increasingly making valuable contributions to…

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Editor’s Choice: This is an excellent example of real “co-created” science between a non-salaried scientist (aka citizen scientist) and salaried scientists. –LFF– Excerpt: Amateur naturalists from the UK have a distinguished pedigree, from Henry Walter Bates and Marianne North, to Alfred Russel Wallace and Mary Anning. But arguably, the rise of post-war academia in the…

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Abstract: Reef Check Australia (RCA) has collected data on benthic composition and cover at > 70 sites along > 1000 km of Australia’s Queensland coast from 2002 to 2015. This paper quantifies the accuracy, precision and power of RCA benthic composition data, to guide its application and interpretation. A simulation study established that the inherent…

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Agricultural workers have long been collecting data on the natural world, but opening up opportunities for farmers to share information raises questions about who would participate and why. This study is unusual for involving farmers in developing countries as potential stakeholders in citizen science, for whom participation may be meaningfully connected to livelihood. While most farmers…

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Abstract: Data collection, storage, analysis, visualization, and dissemination are changing rapidly due to advances in new technologies driven by computer science and universal access to the internet. These technologies and web connections place human observers front and center in citizen science-driven research and are critical in generating new discoveries and innovation in such fields as…

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Summary: In Citizen Science, members of the general public collaborate with scientists to generate and use data relating to the natural world. For the many fields of marine research, this is a particularly powerful approach which should not be overlooked. The sheer scale of coastal and ocean environments mean that it would take several lifetimes…

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Abstract: The validity of the threat status assigned to a species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List relies heavily on the accuracy of the geographic range size estimate for that species. Range maps used to assess threat status often contain large areas of unsuitable habitat, thereby overestimating range and underestimating…

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How can museums advance citizen science? The City Nature Challenge makes evident at least three themes: First, a belief that “science is open to all” is consistent with museums’ values of inclusivity and access. Second, museums know partnerships. (To realize this competitive bioblitz event, the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of…

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Abstract: Life history trait analyses of non-native fishes help identify how novel populations respond to different habitat typologies. Here, using electric fishing and anglers as citizen scientists, scales were collected from the invasive barbel Barbus barbus population from four reaches of the River Severn and Teme, western England. Angler samples were biased towards larger fish,…

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