[Pollinator] National citizen science monitoring of native bees

[Kit Prendergast]

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

-- 
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:
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ORCiD: *https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1164-6099
<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1164-6099>*
Research: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kit-Prendergast/research
YouTube channel The Bee Babette: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBeeBabette
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