scholarly journals The power of large‐scale community science in addressing anthropogenic change

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina J. Alaasam ◽  
Jenny Q. Ouyang
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Anthropogenic Change ◽  
Community Science

Innovation and geographic spread of a complex foraging culture in an urban parrot

Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 373 (6553) ◽  
pp. 456-460
Author(s):  
Barbara C. Klump ◽  
John M. Martin ◽  
Sonja Wild ◽  
Jana K. Hörsch ◽  
Richard E. Major ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environments ◽  
Household Waste ◽  
Anthropogenic Change ◽  
Adaptive Responses ◽  
Direct Observations ◽  
Geographic Spread ◽  
Spatial Network Analysis ◽  
Community Science ◽  
Learning Analysis ◽  
Sydney Australia

The emergence, spread, and establishment of innovations within cultures can promote adaptive responses to anthropogenic change. We describe a putative case of the development of a cultural adaptation to urban environments: opening of household waste bins by wild sulphur-crested cockatoos. A spatial network analysis of community science reports revealed the geographic spread of bin opening from three suburbs to 44 in Sydney, Australia, by means of social learning. Analysis of 160 direct observations revealed individual styles and site-specific differences. We describe a full pathway from the spread of innovation to emergence of geographic variation, evidencing foraging cultures in parrots and indicating the existence of cultural complexity in parrots. Bin opening is directly linked to human-provided opportunities, highlighting the potential for culture to facilitate behavioral responses to anthropogenic change.

COVID-19 impacts on participation in large scale biodiversity-themed community science projects in the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 256 ◽  
pp. 109017
Author(s):  
Theresa M. Crimmins ◽  
Erin Posthumus ◽  
Sara Schaffer ◽  
Kathleen L. Prudic
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Science Projects ◽  
Community Science

scholarly journals Harnessing the Power of Community Science to Address Data Gaps in Arctic Observing: Invasive Species in Alaska as Case Examples

ARCTIC ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Schwoerer ◽  
Katie V. Spellman ◽  
Tammy J. Davis ◽  
Olivia Lee ◽  
Aaron Martin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Invasive Species ◽  
Citizen Science ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Knowledge Exchange ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Additional Tool ◽  
Resource Managers ◽  
Address Data ◽  
Community Science

The Arctic is undergoing large-scale changes that are likely to accelerate in future decades such as introductions and expansions of invasive species. The Arctic is in a unique position to prevent new introductions and spread of existing invasive species by adopting policies and actions aimed at early detection. Responding to threats from invasive species to minimize impacts to ecosystems, communities, food security, and northern economies will necessitate extensive observations and monitoring, but resource managers often face decisions without having adequate data and resources at hand. Local observing programs such as citizen science and community-based monitoring programs present attractive methods for increasing observing capacity that span contributory and co-created approaches while raising awareness of an issue among stakeholders. While the co-created model has been widely applied and encouraged in the Arctic context, contributory citizen science programs offer an additional tool for addressing observing needs in the Arctic. We showcase three contributory citizen science programs related to freshwater, terrestrial, and marine environments that have supported the objectives of the Alaska Invasive Species Partnership. We discuss criteria for achieving ARIAS priority actions at the participant scale related to participants’ motivation and participants’ understanding of the value of their contributions, at the programmatic scale, for example promoting accessible, reciprocal, and transparent knowledge exchange, and at the policy and science scale where management action is data driven. The approach is aimed at successful integration of citizen science into Arctic policy making. Finally, we discuss challenges related to broader global data collection and future directions for contributory citizen science within Arctic observing networks.

The Role of Community Science in Entomology

2021 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary M. Gardiner ◽  
Helen E. Roy
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Pest Monitoring ◽  
The Status ◽  
Control Community ◽  
Patterns And Processes ◽  
Community Science

Community (or citizen) science, the involvement of volunteers in scientific endeavors, has a long history. Over the past few centuries, the contributions of volunteers to our understanding of patterns and processes in entomology has been inspiring. From the collation of large-scale and long-term data sets, which have been instrumental in underpinning our knowledge of the status and trends of many insect groups, to action, including species management, whether for conservation or control, community scientists have played pivotal roles. Contributions, such as pest monitoring by farmers and species discoveries by amateur naturalists, set foundations for the research engaging entomologists today. The next decades will undoubtedly bring new approaches, tools, and technologies to underpin community science. The potential to increase inclusion within community science is providing exciting opportunities within entomology. An increase in the diversity of community scientists, alongside increasing taxonomic and geographic breadth of initiatives, will bring enormous benefits globally for people and nature. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Entomology, Volume 67 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals Community science designed ribosomes with beneficial phenotypes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antje Kruger ◽  
Andrew M Watkins ◽  
Roger Wellington-Oguri ◽  
Jonathan Romano ◽  
Camila Kofman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Rational Design ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Rna Structures ◽  
3D Design ◽  
Design Build ◽  
Community Science ◽  
Rrna Sequences

Functional design of ribosomes with mutant ribosomal RNA (rRNA) could expand opportunities for understanding molecular translation, building cells from the bottom-up, and engineering ribosomes with altered capabilities. However, such efforts have been hampered by cell viability constraints, an enormous combinatorial sequence space, and limitations on large-scale, 3D design of RNA structures and functions. To address these challenges, we developed an integrated community science and experimental screening approach for rational design of ribosomes. This approach couples Eterna, an online video game that crowdsources RNA sequence design to community scientists in the form of puzzles, with in vitro ribosome synthesis, assembly, and translation in multiple design-build-test-learn cycles. We applied our framework to discover mutant rRNA sequences that improve protein synthesis in vitro and cell growth in vivo, relative to wild type ribosomes, under diverse environmental conditions. This work provides new insights into ribosome rRNA sequence-function relationships, with implications for synthetic biology.

scholarly journals Having it all: hybridizing conventional and community science monitoring for enhanced data quality and cost savings

FACETS ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 2028-2041
Author(s):  
Emily Owens ◽  
Stephen B. Heard ◽  
Rob C. Johns
Keyword(s):  
Data Quality ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Population Monitoring ◽  
Professional Staff ◽  
Spatially Correlated ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Spatial Coverage ◽  
Community Science

Large-scale monitoring is used to track population trends for many ecologically and economically important wildlife species. Often, population monitoring involves professional staff travelling to collect data (i.e., conventional monitoring) or in efforts to reduce monitoring costs, by engaging volunteers (i.e., community science). Although many studies have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of conventional vs. community science monitoring, few have made direct, quantitative comparisons between these two approaches. We compared data quality and financial costs between contemporaneous and overlapping conventional and community science programs for monitoring a major forest pest, the spruce budworm ( Choristoneura fumiferanae Clem.). Although community science trapping sites were clumped around urban areas, abundance estimates from the programs were strongly spatially correlated. However, annual program expenditures were nearly four times lower in the community science versus the conventional program. We modelled a hypothetical hybrid model of the two programs, which provided full spatial coverage and potentially the same data, but at half the cost of the conventional program and with the added opportunity for public engagement. Our study provides a unique quantitative analysis of merits and costs of conventional versus community science monitoring. Our study offers insights on how to assess wildlife monitoring programs where multiple approaches exist.

scholarly journals High-Resolution, Long-Term Trends in Relative Abundance from Spatial Modeling of Continent-Wide Bird Counts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy D. Meehan ◽  
Nicole L. Michel ◽  
Håvard Rue
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Current Standard ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Modeling Framework ◽  
American Robin ◽  
Order Of Magnitude ◽  
Community Science

AbstractContinent-wide bird counts by community volunteers provide valuable information about the conservation needs of many bird species. The statistical modeling techniques commonly used to analyze these counts provide robust long-term trend estimates from heterogeneous community science data at regional, national, and continental scales. Here we present a novel modeling framework that increases the spatial resolution of trend estimates, and reduces the computational burden of trend estimation, each by an order of magnitude. We demonstrate the approach with data for the American Robin (Turdus migratorius) from Audubon Christmas Bird Counts conducted between 1966 and 2017, and show that aggregate regional trend estimates from the proposed method align well with those from the current standard method. Thus, it appears that the proposed technique can provide reasonable large-scale trend estimates for users concerned with general patterns, while also providing higher resolution estimates for others examining correlates of abundance trends at finer spatial scales.

scholarly journals Molecular dating of human-to-bovid host jumps by Staphylococcus aureus reveals an association with the spread of domestication

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 829-832 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy A. Weinert ◽  
John J. Welch ◽  
Marc A. Suchard ◽  
Philippe Lemey ◽  
Andrew Rambaut ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Staphylococcus Aureus ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Molecular Dating ◽  
Anthropogenic Change ◽  
Genome Data ◽  
Endemic Diseases ◽  
Commercial Farming ◽  
Phylogenetic Methods ◽  
Cattle Domestication

Host species switches by bacterial pathogens leading to new endemic infections are important evolutionary events that are difficult to reconstruct over the long term. We investigated the host switching of Staphylococcus aureus over a long evolutionary timeframe by developing Bayesian phylogenetic methods to account for uncertainty about past host associations and using estimates of evolutionary rates from serially sampled whole-genome data. Results suggest multiple jumps back and forth between human and bovids with the first switch from humans to bovids taking place around 5500 BP, coinciding with the expansion of cattle domestication throughout the Old World. The first switch to poultry is estimated at around 275 BP, long after domestication but still preceding large-scale commercial farming. These results are consistent with a central role for anthropogenic change in the emergence of new endemic diseases.

Some comments about observations and image processing of comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1

1999 ◽  
Vol 173 ◽  
pp. 243-248
Author(s):  
D. Kubáček ◽  
A. Galád ◽  
A. Pravda
Keyword(s):  
Image Processing ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Harvard College ◽  
Oak Ridge ◽  
Large Scale Structures ◽  
Short Period Comet ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Scale Structures ◽  
Harvard College Observatory ◽  
Period Comet

AbstractUnusual short-period comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 inspired many observers to explain its unpredictable outbursts. In this paper large scale structures and features from the inner part of the coma in time periods around outbursts are studied. CCD images were taken at Whipple Observatory, Mt. Hopkins, in 1989 and at Astronomical Observatory, Modra, from 1995 to 1998. Photographic plates of the comet were taken at Harvard College Observatory, Oak Ridge, from 1974 to 1982. The latter were digitized at first to apply the same techniques of image processing for optimizing the visibility of features in the coma during outbursts. Outbursts and coma structures show various shapes.

Evolution of Large-Scale Coronal Structures

1994 ◽  
Vol 144 ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
P. Ambrož
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Field ◽  
Field Line ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Coronal Magnetic Field ◽  
Source Surface ◽  
Solar Cycles ◽  
Characteristic Relationship ◽  
The Magnetic Field ◽  
Coronal Structures

AbstractThe large-scale coronal structures observed during the sporadically visible solar eclipses were compared with the numerically extrapolated field-line structures of coronal magnetic field. A characteristic relationship between the observed structures of coronal plasma and the magnetic field line configurations was determined. The long-term evolution of large scale coronal structures inferred from photospheric magnetic observations in the course of 11- and 22-year solar cycles is described.Some known parameters, such as the source surface radius, or coronal rotation rate are discussed and actually interpreted. A relation between the large-scale photospheric magnetic field evolution and the coronal structure rearrangement is demonstrated.

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