Photo by Imogen Cavadino.
By Imogen Cavadino, Gordon Port, Aileen Mill, Gerard Clover, Helen Roy, and Hayley Jones.
People who had previous experience in identifying slugs were not more accurate than those who had never tried identifying slugs before taking part. However, everyone did become more accurate in identifying slugs throughout the year of participating in our project.
In 2020 we set out to learn more about the slugs found in British gardens. Along the way, we encountered this unique opportunity to explore how well our project participants could learn to identify slug, a notoriously difficult group of animals to identify. From 2791 applicants we recruited sixty enthusiastic participants from around mainland Britain, and provided them with a slug identification guide and a small amount of training. We asked them to carry out a torchlit search of their gardens once every four weeks, and to collect any slugs they found. They then had a go at identifying them to species level, before sending them in to the researchers at the Royal Horticultural Society for identification. We analysed the differences between the identifications made by project participants and the experienced slug researcher to give a unique insight in to how often mistakes in identification were made. At the start of the project, participants were correct in identifying slugs 47 – 56% of the time, but this improved to 59 – 70% by the end of the project.
It appears that asking people to self-define their abilities for identifying animals to species level may not be accurate, as some may over or underestimate their own level of experience and skill.
Less than 5% of participants dropped out during the project, and feedback showed they both enjoyed themselves and felt their slug identification skills improved significantly. Our study shows that training and support can help people stay engaged with a project and produce useful results, even with a demanding procedure and tricky to identify study group such as slugs.
Relational Thinking 