Mike Dodd

With biodiversity loss escalating globally, a step change is needed in our capacity to accurately monitor species populations across ecosystems. Robotic and autonomous systems (RAS) offer technological solutions that may substantially advance terrestrial biodiversity monitoring, but this potential is yet to be considered systematically. We used a modified Delphi technique to synthesize knowledge from 98 biodiversity experts and 31 RAS experts, who identified the major methodological barriers that currently hinder monitoring, and explored the opportunities and challenges that RAS offer in overcoming these barriers. Biodiversity experts identified four barrier categories: site access, species and individual identification, data handling and storage, and power and network availability. Robotics experts highlighted technologies that could overcome these barriers and identified the developments needed to facilitate RAS-based autonomous biodiversity monitoring. Some existing RAS could be optimized relatively easily to survey species but would require development to be suitable for monitoring of more ‘difficult’ taxa and robust enough to work under uncontrolled conditions within ecosystems. Other nascent technologies (for instance, new sensors and biodegradable robots) need accelerated research. Overall, it was felt that RAS could lead to major progress in monitoring of terrestrial biodiversity by supplementing rather than supplanting existing methods. Transdisciplinarity needs to be fostered between biodiversity and RAS experts so that future ideas and technologies can be codeveloped effectively.

The iSpot citizen science platform*1 allows anyone anywhere to upload images of biodiversity and its community of users helps to identify observations. Key elements of any such system are the species dictionaries that tie together all observations of similar species, allow further information about the taxa to be shown to users and ensure that data collected can be passed on to other recording schemes and global databases. iSpot was launched in 2009 with the UK Species Inventory (UKSI) database as its UK dictionary and the Catalogue of Life (CoL) for its global dictionary. Later, the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) dictionary was added (Silvertown et al. 2015). Taxonomy has changed in many species groups since then and missing groups, particularly from the CoL database, are now included. Linking directly to a live version of CoL or UKSI as a web service or similar, had been considered multiple times over iSpot's development timeline but not implemented due to the complexity. Updating species dictionaries can be a very difficult task. First, these national or international dictionaries are comprised of data from a large number of organisations and individual taxonomists e.g., CoL has global contributions combining taxonomic databases in a variety of formats covering various parts of the taxonomic tree. Second, data comes in at various times and there may be differences over the ‘current’ name and possible synonyms. Third, are issues splitting and aggregating the taxa. Finally, are the number of levels in the taxonomy e.g., are subfamily, subphylum, suborder, used or not. This may differ in data from different organisations, different parts of the tree and may change between overall dictionary versions. In recent years, the use of DNA methods has revolutionised taxonomy in certain groups i.e., fungi; this has not only affected species-level identification but also parts of the higher levels in the tree. iSpot not only shows the species identification (ID), but also the full taxonomic tree with a built-in species browser. This helps with initial identification and education by showing similar taxa and how an observation fits in with the overall tree of life. In theory, all that is needed to update the dictionary is to match the taxon codes from the old to the new dictionary, and for the taxon codes that do not match, to attempt to match on taxon name. However, in practice other issues arose e.g., CoL changing all its taxon codes so additional layers of matching are required. Also not just the current name but all the synonyms and homonyms have to be dealt with. The trial included an initial large matchup, done via ChecklistBank, assisted by staff at the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and CoL. In addition to updating the tree itself, for the system to work, each taxon had to be allocated to an iSpot top level group: amphibians and reptiles, birds, fish, fungi and lichens, invertebrates, mammals, plants and other. For the CoL dictionary, this was a manual process for all five million taxa and synonyms. To facilitate this, the data were written with the full taxonomic hierarchy. This could then be sorted and taxonomic groups added relatively easily. However, there were still taxa that did not match. This is where the iSpot citizen science community provided help. iSpot volunteers attempted to manually work out matches, for example by checking the spelling. There were some spelling errors that led to lack of match, but other issues were more difficult. In some cases, there were pseudonyms that did not appear in the current dictionary or names that seemed to have vanished completely, but the observation could be redetermined. A common problem was where whole species groups were not present in the new dictionary, which was fed back so that the dictionary could be corrected. Examples of common groups where some or all species were missing included: ladybird beetles, gall wasps, cockroaches, dragonflies, shield bugs and some moths. The iSpot community involvement demonstrated citizen scientists helping to improve the overall global species dictionary, see example in Table 1. For each of the 991 instances that volunteer found, notes were provided with references either of the correct taxon to match to or an appropriate higher level group, if the taxon were missing. They also produced notes on, e.g., serious pest species present in the SANBI dictionary but missing from CoL. Some of the volunteers thought it was too difficult or too much responsibility and dropped out. The results were checked by the iSpot Curator, who also dealt with groups of organisms with no volunteers. Once the dictionary is updated, information needs to be propagated to all parts of the iSpot platform. During this process some of the manually entered names for taxa, can be automatically linked to the new dictionary.

Accurate species identification is fundamental to biodiversity science, but the natural history skills required for this are neglected in formal education at all levels. In this paper we describe how the web application ispotnature.org and its sister site ispot.org.za (collectively, “iSpot”) are helping to solve this problem by combining learning technology with crowdsourcing to connect beginners with experts. Over 94% of observations submitted to iSpot receive a determination. External checking of a sample of 3,287 iSpot records verified > 92% of them. To mid 2014, iSpot crowdsourced the identification of 30,000 taxa (>80% at species level) in > 390,000 observations with a global community numbering > 42,000 registered participants. More than half the observations on ispotnature.org were named within an hour of submission. iSpot uses a unique, 9-dimensional reputation system to motivate and reward participants and to verify determinations. Taxon-specific reputation points are earned when a participant proposes an identification that achieves agreement from other participants, weighted by the agreers’ own reputation scores for the taxon. This system is able to discriminate effectively between competing determinations when two or more are proposed for the same observation. In 57% of such cases the reputation system improved the accuracy of the determination, while in the remainder it either improved precision (e.g. by adding a species name to a genus) or revealed false precision, for example where a determination to species level was not supported by the available evidence. We propose that the success of iSpot arises from the structure of its social network that efficiently connects beginners and experts, overcoming the social as well as geographic barriers that normally separate the two.

Summary: 1. Volunteers have helped in scientific surveys of birds and other organisms for decades, but more recently, the use of the Internet has enormously widened the opportunity for citizen science and greatly increased its practice. There is now a need to share experience of which methods work and which do not. Here, we describe how we planned and executed the Evolution MegaLab, one of the largest surveys of polymorphism in wild species so far undertaken.2. The aim of the Evolution MegaLab was to exploit the occasion of Charles Darwin’s double centenary in 2009 to mobilize the widest possible section of the general public in Europe to help survey shell polymorphism in the banded snails Cepaea nemoralis and Cepaea hortensis. These data were then compared with historical records to detect evolutionary change that may have taken place in the decades between samples.3. Records of polymorphism in over 7000 populations sampled throughout the natural range of the two species were captured from published and unpublished sources and added to an online database. These data could be explored by the general public via a Google Maps interface on the project website (http://evolutionmegalab.org). The website contained a welcome page that explained what evolution is and how recent changes in climate, and the abundance of predatory birds (song thrushes Turdus philomelos) might have caused an evolutionary change in the shell patterns of banded snails.4. A network of collaborators in 15 European countries was formed, with each country responsible for translating the website and associated materials, recruiting volunteers and raising any funds required locally. A total of 6461 users registered with the site, and 7629 records were submitted. We used an online quiz to train users and to test their ability, to recognize the correct snails and their morphs. Every user received automated, immediate feedback that compared their data with nearby records from the historical database.5. The critical tasks achieved by the Evolution MegaLab that any citizen science project must tackle are as follows: (i) design of an appropriate project, (ii) recruitment, motivation and training of volunteers, and (iii) ensuring data quality.

Summary: 1. There has been much written about sampling design, spatial scale and the need for permanent plots in long‐term monitoring but very few authors have considered how to locate and re‐find positions in the field accurately. Indeed, many attempts at re‐sampling exact positions set up many years previously have failed.2. Various field measurement systems were compared including 50‐m tape, consumer‐grade GPS, total‐station theodolite and differential GPS.3. Both total station and differential GPS were able to measure and relocate quadrats accurately to within a few centimetres over distances of hundreds of metres or more.4. Of over 500 1 × 1 m vegetation monitoring quadrats set out and location re‐recorded by differential GPS at sites across UK, only 1% had positional errors of more than 0·2 m. None of these quadrat locations relied on permanent markers. Differential GPS has the advantage of speed and delivering coordinates in latitude/longitude or local coordinate system directly.5. Accurately located quadrats can be resurveyed many years in the future just using the original coordinates without worrying about ‘permanent’ markers that rarely turn out to be truly permanent. If more researchers used these techniques, then there is huge potential for establishing networks of accurate long‐term monitoring positions, which could provide information on a wide range of topics, such as vegetation dynamics and environmental change even if these were not the original research objectives.

Organisms provide some of the most sensitive indicators of climate change and evolutionary responses are becoming apparent in species with short generation times. Large datasets on genetic polymorphism that can provide an historical benchmark against which to test for recent evolutionary responses are very rare, but an exception is found in the brown-lipped banded snail (Cepaea nemoralis). This species is sensitive to its thermal environment and exhibits several polymorphisms of shell colour and banding pattern affecting shell albedo in the majority of populations within its native range in Europe. We tested for evolutionary changes in shell albedo that might have been driven by the warming of the climate in Europe over the last half century by compiling an historical dataset for 6,515 native populations of C. nemoralis and comparing this with new data on nearly 3,000 populations. The new data were sampled mainly in 2009 through the Evolution MegaLab, a citizen science project that engaged thousands of volunteers in 15 countries throughout Europe in the biggest such exercise ever undertaken. A known geographic cline in the frequency of the colour phenotype with the highest albedo (yellow) was shown to have persisted and a difference in colour frequency between woodland and more open habitats was confirmed, but there was no general increase in the frequency of yellow shells. This may have been because snails adapted to a warming climate through behavioural thermoregulation. By contrast, we detected an unexpected decrease in the frequency of Unbanded shells and an increase in the Mid-banded morph. Neither of these evolutionary changes appears to be a direct response to climate change, indicating that the influence of other selective agents, possibly related to changing predation pressure and habitat change with effects on micro-climate.

The global extinction of species proceeds through the erosion of local populations. Using a 60‐year time series of annual sighting records of plant species, we studied the correlates of local extinction risk associated with a risk of species extinction in the Park Grass Experiment where plants received long‐term exposure to nutrient enrichment, soil acidification, and reductions in habitat size. We used multivariate linear models to assess how extrinsic threats and life history traits influence extinction risk. We investigated effects of four extrinsic threats (nitrogen enrichment, productivity, acidification, and plot size) as well as 11 life history traits (month of earliest flowering, flowering duration, stress tolerance, ruderalness [plant species' ability to cope with habitat disturbance], plant height, diaspore mass, seed bank, life form, dispersal mode, apomixis [the ability for a species to reproduce asexually through seeds], and mating system). Extinction risk was not influenced by plant family. All of the 11 life history traits except life form and all threat variables influenced extinction risk but always via interactions which typically involved one threat variable and one life history trait. We detected comparatively few significant interactions between life history traits, and the interacting traits compensated for each other. These results suggest that simple predictions about extinction risk based on species' traits alone will often fail. In contrast, understanding the interactions between extrinsic threats and life history traits will allow us to make more accurate predictions of extinctions.

A significant proportion of the global diversity of flowering plants has evolved in recent geological time, probably through adaptive radiation into new niches. However, rapid evolution is at odds with recent research which has suggested that plant ecological traits, including the β- (or habitat) niche, evolve only slowly. We have quantified traits that determine within-habitat α diversity (α niches) in two communities in which species segregate on hydrological gradients. Molecular phylogenetic analysis of these data shows practically no evidence of a correlation between the ecological and evolutionary distances separating species, indicating that hydrological α niches are evolutionarily labile. We propose that contrasting patterns of evolutionary conservatism for α- and β-niches is a general phenomenon necessitated by the hierarchical filtering of species during community assembly. This determines that species must have similar β niches in order to occupy the same habitat, but different α niches in order to coexist.

Summary: Because related species tend to be ecologically similar, it has long been recognized that the phylogenetic relationships between species in a community are likely to influence its structure. Previous investigations of the influence of phylogeny on community structure have generally shown that congeneric species are more frequent than would be expected if communities were randomly assembled. Because, under most theories of coexistence, stable coexistence requires ecological differences between species, the apparent excess of coexisting congeners suggests that trait differences important to coexistence must be recently evolved, arising near the tips of phylogenetic trees. We test this hypothesis in two meadow plant communities for which we have good evidence of niche segregation along axes defined by hydrological conditions. Niche overlaps were calculated and compared against null models for (i) all species in the community, (ii) species within genera, (iii) genera within families, (iv) families within the eudicots and monocots, and (v) eudicots and monocots. Against expectation, we found that community structure was the cumulative result of niche separation arising at a range of phylogenetic levels and therefore that niche differences have been accumulated through the evolutionary history of species.