First image: The black-Necked Stilt in Belgium showed the largest time lag, with the citizen science platforms reporting it 28 years early than official records. Source: Alan D. Wilson (https://www.naturespicsonline.com)

Second image: Volunteers contributing biodiversity records in a dehesa forest in Spain using smartphone apps. Source: Pablo González Moreno

By Pablo González-Moreno, Ana A. Anđelković, Tim Adriaens, Christophe Botella, Jakovos Demetriou, Rita Bastos, Sandro Bertolino, Celia López-Cañizares, Franz Essl, Živa Fišer, Milka Glavendekić, Marc Herremans, Philip E Hulme, Viola Jani, Dimitra Katsada, Periklis Kleitou, Katharina Lapin, Marta López-Darias, Vanessa Lozano, Angeliki F. Martinou, Damiano Oldoni, Esra Per, Stephanie Rorke, Helen E.Roy, Karl-Manfred Schweinzer, Kristijn Swinnen, Elena Tricarico, Joana R. Vicente, Maarten de Groot, and Michael Pocock.

Read the full paper here.

Better late than never but never late is better. The best way to manage invasive alien species is early detection of the most problematic species that wreak havoc on our environment, economy, and health. Tracking them can be a formidable challenge and professional scientists cannot do this alone. Everyone can help. For instance, people can help by using one of the popular biological recording apps to submit records of wildlife.

Our research looked at 600 official first recordings of alien species from 30 countries. We compared the performance of official databases with what we found among 220 million records from twenty popular public recording platforms, including eBird, Pl@ntNet, iNaturalist, ArtPortalen and waarnemingen.be. This is thus the first study that actually measures the importance of records from the public for early invasive species detection.

The conclusion? Citizen science platforms are effective for IAS early detection.  On 20% of the cases, the platforms reported earlier than official sources, while 30% were in the same year. The other half were cases where official surveillance was first. We then looked at factors that might explain these differences. Invasives regulated at European level turned up most rapidly on platforms, probably because they are best known. Once observed in a neighbouring country, the public also picks up the species more rapidly in another. People require special techniques to identify some more obscure species and official surveillance schemes will therefore find them more rapidly. Also, there were differences between countries, with Sweden and Netherlands being the champions in public first detections.

Based on our research we recommend authorities and public recording schemes work better together. Ensuring data flows from one to the other is important, and to achieve this people’s records must end up on open data platforms. Governments should work with the platforms to make sure they have access to new technologies and have the means to stimulate recording in relevant areas.