210X.12581Abstract Citizen science, the involvement of volunteers in collecting of scientific data, can be a useful research tool. However, data collected by volunteers are often of lower quality than that collected by professional scientists. We studied the accuracy with which volunteers identified insects visiting ivy (Hedera) flowers in Sussex, England. In the first experiment, we examined the effects of training method, volunteer background and prior experience. Fifty-three participants were trained for the same duration using one of three different methods (pamphlet, pamphlet + slide show, pamphlet + direct training). Almost immediately following training, we tested the ability of participants to identify live insects on ivy flowers to one of 10 taxonomic categories and recorded whether their identifications were correct or incorrect, without providing feedback. The results showed that the type of training method had a significant effect on identification accuracy (P = 0.008). Participants identified 79.1% of insects correctly after using a one-page colour pamphlet, 85.6% correctly after using the pamphlet and viewing a slide show, and 94.3% correctly after using the pamphlet in combination with direct training in the field. As direct training cannot be delivered remotely, in the following year we conducted a second experiment, in which a different sample of 26 volunteers received the pamphlet plus slide show training repeatedly three times. Moreover, in this experiment participants received c. 2 minutes of additional training material, either videos of insects or stills taken from the videos. Testing showed that identification accuracy increased from 88.6% to 91.3% to 97.5% across the three successive tests.We also found a borderline significant interaction between the type of additional 2 material and the test number (P = 0.053), such that the video gave fewer errors than stills in the first two tests only. The most common errors made by volunteers were misidentifications of honey bees and social wasps with their hover fly mimics. We also tested six experts who achieved nearly perfect accuracy (99.8%), which shows what is possible in practice. Overall, our study shows that two or three sessions of remote training can be as good as one of direct training, even for relatively challenging taxonomic discriminations that include distinguishing models and mimics. IntroductionCitizen science, in which volunteers collect scientific data, is an increasingly popular tool with great potential in research (Dickinson & Bonney 2012; Theobald et al. 2015). By However, citizen science has several challenges. In order for the data to be useful, volunteers generally need training, supervision and overall management. In addition, the data collected by volunteers is often perceived as of low quality and unreliable. For example, in 1993 an amendment was made to prohibit the US National Biological Survey from accepting the work of volunteers, following the assertion by the House of Representatives that "volunteers are i...
In pollination, plants provide food reward to pollinators who in turn enhance plant reproduction by transferring pollen, making the relationship largely cooperative; however, because the interests of plants and pollinators do not always align, there exists the potential for conflict, where it may benefit both to cheat the other [1, 2]. Plants may even resort to chemistry: caffeine, a naturally occurring, bitter-tasting, pharmacologically active secondary compound whose main purpose is to detract herbivores, is also found in lower concentrations in the nectar of some plants, even though nectar, unlike leaves, is made to be consumed by pollinators. [corrected]. A recent laboratory study showed that caffeine may lead to efficient and effective foraging by aiding honeybee memory of a learned olfactory association [4], suggesting that caffeine may enhance bee reward perception. However, without field data, the wider ecological significance of caffeinated nectar remains difficult to interpret. Here we demonstrate in the field that caffeine generates significant individual- and colony-level effects in free-flying worker honeybees. Compared to a control, a sucrose solution with field-realistic doses of caffeine caused honeybees to significantly increase their foraging frequency, waggle dancing probability and frequency, and persistency and specificity to the forage location, resulting in a quadrupling of colony-level recruitment. An agent-based model also demonstrates how caffeine-enhanced foraging may reduce honey storage. Overall, caffeine causes bees to overestimate forage quality, tempting the colony into sub-optimal foraging strategies, which makes the relationship between pollinator and plant less mutualistic and more exploitative. VIDEO ABSTRACT.
Due to an author oversight during the proofreading stage, the version of this Review that originally appeared online and in print contained three erroneous instances, one in Figure 4B and two in Figures 6B and 6C, in which red circles indicating C-Mad2 should instead have been yellow circles indicating O-Mad2. Furthermore, the ''C'' label indicating the carboxy-terminal end of the C-Mad2 model in Figure 4E was misplaced. These errors have now been corrected in the article online. The author apologizes for the inconvenience.
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