Biodiversi-TEA—A quick and easy handling method for arthropod trap material in ethanol

Schweizer, Tanja; Wanke, Dominic; Haas, Michael; Krogmann, Lars

doi:10.11646/zootaxa.4731.2.7

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 3 publications

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“…Historically, such local sourcing often meant co-opting mass-produced parts that were initially produced for a different purpose. Examples are DNA purification and preservation with paper towels at room temperature [ 20 , 21 ], the use of an orbital shaker for size-sorting insect samples constructed from mostly household goods [ 22 ], or the use of tea strainers for the safe transport of Malaise trap samples [ 23 ], but nowadays co-option can be complemented with three-dimensional printing of purpose-built designs because three-dimensional printers are now ubiquitous.…”

Section: Frugal Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Towards global insect biomonitoring with frugal methods

Brydegaard,

Pedales,

Feng

et al. 2024

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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None of the global targets for protecting nature are currently met, although humanity is critically dependent on biodiversity. A significant issue is the lack of data for most biodiverse regions of the planet where the use of frugal methods for biomonitoring would be particularly important because the available funding for monitoring is insufficient, especially in low-income countries. We here discuss how three approaches to insect biomonitoring (computer vision, lidar, DNA sequences) could be made more frugal and urge that all biomonitoring techniques should be evaluated for global suitability before becoming the default in high-income countries. This requires that techniques popular in high-income countries should undergo a phase of ‘innovation through simplification’ before they are implemented more broadly. We predict that techniques that acquire raw data at low cost and are suitable for analysis with AI (e.g. images, lidar-signals) will be particularly suitable for global biomonitoring, while techniques that rely heavily on patented technologies may be less promising (e.g. DNA sequences). We conclude the opinion piece by pointing out that the widespread use of AI for data analysis will require a global strategy for providing the necessary computational resources and training. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Towards a toolkit for global insect biodiversity monitoring’.

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Section: Frugal Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%