A review of invasive species reporting apps for citizen science and opportunities for innovation

Abstract

Smartphone apps have enhanced the potential for monitoring of invasive alien species (IAS) through citizen science. They now have the capacity to massively increase the volume and spatiotemporal coverage of IAS occurrence data accrued in centralised databases. While more reporting apps are developed each year, innovation across diverse functionalities and data management in this field are occurring separately and simultaneously amongst numerous research groups with little attention to trends, priorities and opportunities for improvement. This creates the risk of duplication of effort and missed opportunities for implementing new and existing functionalities that would directly benefit IAS research and management. Using a literature search of Early Detection and Rapid Response implementation, smartphone app development and invasive species reporting apps, we developed a rubric for quantitatively assessing the functionality of IAS reporting apps and applied this rubric to 41 free, English-language IAS reporting apps, available via major mobile app stores in North America. The five highest performing apps achieved scores of 61.90% to 66.35% relative to a hypothetical maximum score, indicating that many app features and functionalities, acknowledged to be useful for IAS reporting in literature, are not present in sampled apps. This suggests that current IAS reporting apps do not make use of all available and known functionalities that could maximise their efficacy. Major implementation gaps, highlighted by this rubric analysis, included limited implementation in user engagement (particularly gamification elements and social media compatibility), ancillary information on search effort, detection method, the ability to report absences and local habitat characteristics. The greatest advancement in IAS early detection would likely result from app gamification. This would make IAS reporting more engaging for a growing community of non-professional contributors and encourage frequent and prolonged participation. We discuss these implementation gaps in relation to the increasingly urgent need for Early Detection and Rapid Response frameworks. We also recommend future innovations in IAS reporting app development to help slow the spread of IAS and curb the global economic and biodiversity extinction crises. We also suggest that further funding and investment in this and other implementation gaps could greatly increase the efficacy of current IAS reporting apps and increase their contributions to addressing the contemporary biological invasion threat.

Updating new invasions: The Australian tortoise beetle Trachymela sloanei (Blackburn, 1897) (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) in the Iberian Peninsula

“…It is imperative to highlight the importance of early monitoring programmes for newly introduced populations. Almost half of the records have been obtained from citizen science platforms, which have become a very useful tool for monitoring the expansion of alien populations (Howard et al, 2022). To facilitate future identifications and studies, we also provide illustrations of the larvae, pupae and adults found in the Iberian Peninsula as well as the signs that allow us to detect a Trachymela infestation.…”

A framework to integrate innovations in invasion science for proactive management

“…Bayesian Hierarchical Models, Section V), and prioritizing volunteer sampling in areas that would contribute most to modelling (Callaghan et al ., 2019). Mobile apps and open online databases (see Section IV) are also an important part of facilitating and enhancing the role of community science in IAS monitoring (Johnson et al ., 2020; Howard et al ., 2022).…”

“…Historically, community science mainly involved volunteers assisting professional technicians to collect data in the field, but websites and smartphone applications have opened new avenues for participation (Mazumdar et al ., 2018; Howard et al ., 2022). Digital crowdsourcing allows people to participate virtually in a variety of roles, including as volunteer naturalists, identifying species based on observations (e.g.…”

Towards a real-time tracking of an expanding alien bee species in Southeast Europe through citizen science and floral host monitoring

“…If the study species was found, we recorded the number of individuals (timed counts in combination with snapshot counts -methodology described in [43]), collected specimens if possible, and documented the abundance and blooming status of plants following the protocol described by Bila Dubaić et al [43]. This protocol also allowed us to gather data on 'not detected' records for study sites (figure 3): when necessary conditions were met (optimal weather conditions and the sufficient abundance of blooming key floral resources), but no records of M. sculpturalis were obtained [79,[82][83][84][85].…”