Wildlife tourism is an important platform to investigate the relationship between people and nature. Given that wildlife destinations are likely to receive higher tourism demand from new emerging economies, this article considers the wider emotional and psycho logical implications of wildlife watching. The growing significance of this tourist activity is a potential reawakening of a deeper ecological sub-consciousness brought about by a society that is disconnected from nature. Particular attention is given to the impor tance o f experiencing nature first hand, the psychological benefits, and the emotional responses that may engender a relationship of care. This is good for both the human spirit and for nature conservation.

We investigated spider assemblages in trees at three cloud forest sites and in trees isolated in pasture habitat in Monteverde, Costa Rica. Spiders were collected from two forest types (primary and secondary) within each forest site, and at two different levels (canopy and understory) within forest types and the pasture. They were identified to family or genus level and assigned to morphospecies. Araneidae and Linyphiidae were the most commonly collected families at all locations. Although spider abundance and morphospecies richness did not differ between forest types, perhaps due to their close proximity, these parameters were generally lower in the forest canopy than in the understory. Relative abundances of nearly all common spider families also differed between canopy and understory levels within forests, suggesting that distinct sub-assemblages exist. However, spider abundance and morphospecies richness did not differ between canopy and understory in pasture trees. Spiders were generally more abundant and more diverse in the pasture than the forest, possibly due to its lower elevation or its greater habitat complexity in the form of vascular epiphytes. ResumenSe investigaron las comunidades de arañas en tres sitios de bosque nuboso y en árboles de potrero en Monteverde, Costa Rica. Las arañas fueron recogidas de dos tipos de bosque (primario y secundario) en cada sitio, y a dos niveles (copa de árboles y sotobosque) en cada tipo de bosque y en árboles del potrero. Fueron identificadas al nivel de familia o genero y clasificadas como morfoespecies. Las familias Araneidae y Linyphiidae eran las más comúnes. La abundancia y cantidad de morfoespecies no variaban entre los dos tipos del bosque, tal vez porque los dos tipos de bosque estuvieron próximos. Además, la abundancia y cantidad de morfoespecias eran menos en la copa de árboles que en el sotobosque. La abundancia proporcional de casi todas las familias comúnes también era diferente entre los dos niveles, el cual puede indicar que existen comunidades distintas. No se encontraron diferencias en la abundancia y cantidad de morfoespecies entre los dos niveles de árboles en el potrero. De todas maneras, las arañas eran más abundantes y más diversas en el potrero que en el bosque, posiblemente porque el potrero tiene menos altura y tiene una estructura mas compleja en la forma de epífitas vasculares.

Background: Environmental volunteering can increase well-being, but environmental volunteer well-being has rarely been compared to participant well-being associated with other types of volunteering or nature-based activities. This paper aims to use a multidimensional approach to well-being to explore the immediately experienced and later remembered well-being of environmental volunteers and to compare this to the increased well-being of participants in other types of nature-based activities and volunteering. Furthermore, it aims to compare volunteer managers’ perceptions of their volunteers’ well-being with the self-reported well-being of the volunteers. Methods: Onsite surveys were conducted of practical conservation and biodiversity monitoring volunteers, as well as their control groups (walkers and fieldwork students, respectively), to measure general well-being before their nature-based activity and activity-related well-being immediately after their activity. Online surveys of current, former and potential volunteers and volunteer managers measured remembered volunteering-related well-being and managers’ perceptions of their volunteers’ well-being. Data were analysed based on Seligman’s multidimensional PERMA (‘positive emotion’, ‘engagement’, ‘positive relationship’, ‘meaning’, ‘achievement’) model of well-being. Factor analysis recovered three of the five PERMA elements, ‘engagement’, ‘relationship’ and ‘meaning’, as well as ‘negative emotion’ and ‘health’ as factors. Results: Environmental volunteering significantly improved positive elements and significantly decreased negative elements of participants’ immediate well-being, and it did so more than walking or student fieldwork. Even remembering their volunteering up to six months later, volunteers rated their volunteering-related well-being higher than volunteers rated their well-being generally in life. However, volunteering was not found to have an effect on overall mean well-being generally in life. Volunteer managers did not perceive the significant increase in well-being that volunteers reported. Conclusions: This study showed how environmental volunteering immediately improved participants’ well-being, even more than other nature-based activities. It highlights the benefit of regarding well-being as a multidimensional construct to more systematically understand, support and enhance volunteer well-being.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can augment and sometimes even replace human cognition. Inspired by efforts to value human agency alongside productivity, we discuss and categorize the potential of solving Citizen Science (CS) tasks with Hybrid Intelligence (HI), a synergetic mixture of human and artificial intelligence. Due to the unique participant-centered set of values and the abundance of tasks drawing upon both human common sense and complex 21st century skills, we believe that the field of CS offers an invaluable testbed for the development of human-centered AI including HI, while also benefiting CS. In order to investigate this potential, we first relate CS to adjacent computational disciplines. Then, we demonstrate that CS projects can be grouped according to their potential for HI-enhancement by examining two key dimensions: the level of digitization and the amount of knowledge or experience required for participation. Finally, we propose a framework for types of human-AI interaction in CS based on established criteria of HI. This “HI lens” provides the CS community with an overview of ways to utilize the combination of AI and human intelligence in their projects. For AI researchers, this work highlights the opportunity CS presents to engage with real-world data sets and explore new AI methods and applications.

This report aims to enhance our understanding of stakeholder mapping for co-created citizen science initiatives. It presents and discusses findings from an international two-day stakeholder mapping workshop with researchers, event organizers, communication experts, and artists realizing citizen science activities. Participants identified examples of co-creation in their work and mapped stakeholders for three co-creation initiatives from the "Doing It Together Science" project. For each case, we provide an overview of the stakeholder groups involved and the lessons derived from identifying actual and potential stakeholders in different phases of each activity and using different ways for mapping them. We demonstrate that not only stakeholder mapping can be diverse, but it may take different angles depending on the characteristics and project timescales, nevertheless adding significant value to any project. We argue that a better understanding of stakeholder involvement may contribute to more effective stakeholder communication, more successful implementation, and a greater impact for citizen science initiatives.