National citizen science monitoring of native bees

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Kit Prendergast

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Sep 14, 2025, 6:02:50 AMSep 14
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Hi Beeple,

I've been thinking about national citizen science monitoring protocols for Australia and would like to hear anyone's experience and opinion on the following please;

Citizen science is of course a powerful tool for documenting invasive species, or range extensions, but when it comes to monitoring, how can we assess data in a way that ensures we get robust monitoring data?

In Australia there is an Australian pollinator count which is not designed well at all for monitoring. It's based on people choosing a plant (any plant) in spring  and autumn recording for just 10 mins on this one day twice a year (and could be a different plant species) how many insects in pre-defined and poorly defined categories (e.g. there's no category for Neopasiphaeinae, Hylaeinae and Euryglossinae, who are lumped into 'other native bees', despite making up about one quarter of native bee biodiversity, then there's 'stingless bees' (11 species), 'blue banded bees' (14 species, but one doesn't have bands let alone blue bands) and then 'other Australian bee'; ladybird beetle (which probably aren't pollinators), 'native wasp' (with a photo of a non-native wasp :s), European wasp , and 'butterfly, moth or skipper' (somehow skippers are not butterflies?). Anyway, I don't see how anyone can possibly track the abundance or diversity of native bees and other insects based on two 10 min observation periods in the year .

But for citizen science monitoring as a whole;

The first issue is identifications - even with photos where we can verify, it is impossible for many species to get accurate IDs, and with photos, it's unlikely you'll photo every bee on a plant if it's an attractive plant with many visitors. 
So you're going to get mainly insects that are easy to photograph, and not get an abundance estimate, just a presence and not know whether it's one or 20.

Then there is the issue of disentangling how many people are recording - if we see an increase in a taxon, is it just because more people are making observations?

So for those involved in POMS or any of the other UK/Ireland/USA monitoring projects on large scales, how can you actually get a handle even on coarse levels (e.g. of a higher taxonomic group like Halictidae) of their abundance when it is confounded by how many people are making observations? You could average number of that taxon observed over 10 mins by number of observers, but it still makes it tricky to actually know how the abundance of that taxon is doing, especially if you've got different areas being recorded each time.

My observation is that citizen science is best suited for tracking populations of an easy to identify, single species, documenting range extensions, changes in phenology, but is less suited for monitoring of populations. However, there is way more funding in Australia for citizen science than professional science monitoring of native bees, so I really want to ensure that given the push for the former, we can actually get a good handle on how our native bees are doing, not just how many people are making recordings over time.

Best,
Kit

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Dr Kit Prendergast
Native bee scientist, conservation biologist and zoologist
University of Southern QLD Postdoctoral Researcher (Pollination Ecology)
Adjunct Curtin University and Forrest Scholar Alumni

Find native bee resources and more on my Patreon The Bee Babette: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheBeeBabette

YouTube channel The Bee Babette: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBeeBabette 
Insta: @bee.babette_performer:

Nash Turley

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Sep 15, 2025, 3:43:12 PMSep 15
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Hello Kit, 

I can't claim to have answers to any of the questions you posed because the issues with biases in photo-based data and struggles with saying anything about changes in abundance are both extremely difficult problems. But your email sparked a couple thoughts: 

1) I'm sure you know this already, but I encourage everyone to be careful to not conflate community science (or citizen or participatory science, whichever term you like) with visual or photo-based observations. We wrote a paper trying to make the distinctions in bee monitoring efforts between who is collecting the data, and what type of data they are collecting. We compare community science that works with a smaller number of trained people doing collections and the more common community science approach that is masses of people out taking photos, and we put some numbers to the differences in outcomes between those. I hope we made a strong case for some of the strengths of community science approach involving specimen collections while also quantifying the strengths and weaknesses of photo-based approaches: https://doi.org/10.1093/aesa/saae014  

2) You might want to consider an approach looking at measuring or testing changes in occupancy rather than changes in abundance, which could help address some of the issues you brought up, see this paper for argument for that: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110932

Nash 

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Russel Barsh

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Sep 15, 2025, 6:33:14 PMSep 15
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Kit --

I agree enthusiastically with Nash Turley regarding community science programs, as differentiated from crowd-sourcing observations and photos from the general public. Our lab has several community-science projects that involve small geographic areas and thoroughly trained, supervised volunteers living in that vicinity. An example is our Indian Island Marine Health Observatory, which has collected species abundance data from a 2-acre island preserve for 17 years. Currently, we are building a new community project at Cattle Point, San Juan Island, that will monitor butterflies, bees, rare wildflowers and feral foxes in a 20-acre dunefield. We aim for publishable data and treat nonprofessional participants as co-researchers and co-authors. A key component of this is "caring for country" -- engaging people in monitoring change in a landscape they occupy and use, even if it is a publicly owned preserve. Connecting data-gathering with stewardship responsibility can increase protection of sensitive landscapes.

Not to say that crowdsourcing is useless; but we have tried it, most recently as a way of monitoring changing regional shorebird communities, and we have the same concerns about inconsistent data quality (and incomplete/shifting geographic coverage) that others have mentioned. Of course, there are robust statistical methods to extract patterns from messy data of this nature. But some biases are difficult to correct. One that we see, in our small corner of the planet, is people identifying an organism as the rarest species that looks like it. This undercuts the use of non-curated open call data for presence-absence mapping.

There is a middle ground of sorts, exemplified here in the Salish Sea by COASST, launched by Julia Parrish at the University of Washington in the 'aughties -- training local volunteers to identify dead marine birds washed up on shorelines. Training was rigorous, and in-person support and online tools for volunteers have been substantial. Having been involved, I can say that the investment of time by Julia and her graduate students was very significant. They traveled to meet volunteers and hold refresher workshops annually. As time passed, the program evolved into a number of local nuclei that were basically communities where a critical mass of volunteers lived. So, a solar system of community science teams...

Best wishes --

Russel.
--
Russel Barsh
Director, KWIAHT
PO Box 415, Lopez Island WA 98261


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