Community scientists produce open data for understanding insects and climate change

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Conservation Biology
• Citizen Science

Background:

• Insect species face unprecedented threats from human-driven global changes, necessitating urgent conservation efforts.
• These changes impact ecosystem functions and human well-being, highlighting the critical role of insects.
• Biodiversity platforms are increasingly populated by data from community scientists, aiding ecological research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review global community science programs that provide publicly available insect data.
• To explore the advantages and challenges associated with large-scale community science initiatives for insect research.
• To emphasize the importance of collaboration between professional scientists and community scientists for insect conservation.

Main Methods:

• Review of open, global community science programs focused on insect data.
• Analysis of data contributions to public biodiversity platforms.
• Exploration of existing literature on challenges and advancements in insect identification and sampling.

Main Results:

• Community science programs are a major source of public insect occurrence and abundance data.
• Data from these programs are crucial for estimating insect diversity, distributions, and forecasting responses to anthropogenic stressors.
• Challenges in taxonomy, species identification, and sampling persist but can be addressed with new tools and approaches.

Conclusions:

• Large-scale community science ventures offer significant advantages for insect research and conservation.
• Effective insect conservation requires a collaborative approach between professional ecologists and community scientists.
• Continued development of tools and methodologies is needed to overcome current limitations in community-sourced insect data.