Scientific Method / Science & Exploration

How to do scientific research without even trying (much)

It takes just a few steps to make your nature photos scientifically useful.

This assassin bug wasn't even known to be present in Spain until some people snapped photographs of it.
J-M Sesma

To some extent, scientific research requires expensive or specialized equipment—some work just requires a particle accelerator or a virus containment facility. But plenty of other research has very simple requirements: a decent camera, a bit of patience, or being in the right place at the right time. Since that sort of work is open to anyone, getting the public involved can be a huge win for scientists, who can then obtain much more information than they could have gathered on their own.

A group of Spanish researchers has now written an article that is a mixture of praise for this sort of citizen science, a resource list for people hoping to get involved, and a how-to guide for anyone inspired to join in. The researchers focus on their own area of interest—insects, specifically the hemiptera or "true bugs"—but a lot of what they say applies to other areas of research.

The basics of the sort of citizen science they're encouraging involves cameras. Every day, people head out of the house with digital cameras that are far more powerful than the ones most scientists could afford a decade ago. In the course of their day, they can easily take photos of plants and animals that can be used to identify the species involved. It just takes a bit of extra work to make these photos scientifically useful. As the authors write, "Uploaded macro photographs may be scientifically valuable when they provide (a) shooting date; (b) shooting site data, including georeferenced data in current units as UTM or Latitude/Longitude; and (c) features needed to identify the specimen to species level."

That last bit can be rather challenging for insects, since many species look very similar, with the primary difference being physically distinct genitalia (in many cases, distinct enough to preclude mating). Most photographers, the authors lament, don't take the time to get a good shot of bugs' genitalia: "Unfortunately, high-quality beautiful insect shots are too often uploaded for the sake of aesthetics and not entomology." Additional details, like altitude and the plant the bug was on, would also be helpful.

Even with the lack of genitalia shots, the public's photos have had some notable successes. Several species that weren't known to live in Spain at all were spotted through photos taken by the public, and a species that was once limited to the warm Mediterranean coast was tracked as it expanded into the warming northern part of the Iberian Peninsula. One species was even photographed enough that the authors could figure out its reproductive cycle based on when young insects appeared and matured.

The paper also lists a variety of regional-specific sites that focus on insect identification and tracking, such as ones for the UK, Belgium, and Slovenia. But a dedicated system isn't required for this sort of resource. In the researchers' home base on the Iberian Peninsula, insects are tracked via a Flickr group. (If you're interested in insect research and based in the US, you can also find dozens of projects at the SciStarter site.) We've uploaded some of the most amazing images into a gallery that accompanies this article.

There will always be limitations to the sort of material we'll be able to get through efforts like this—as the authors point out, abundant and brilliantly colored bugs will always be overrepresented at the photo sharing sites. However, the initial successes clearly show that there's also a lot of valuable data waiting to be tapped at these sites.

ZooKeys, 2013. DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.319.4342  (About DOIs).

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