Coupling Traditional Monitoring and Citizen Science to Disentangle the Invasion of Halyomorpha halys

Abstract

Abstract:The brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys Stål (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), is an invasive pest that has expanded its range outside of its original confinements in Eastern Asia, spreading through the United States, Canada and most of the European and Eurasian countries. The invasiveness of this agricultural and public nuisance pest is facilitated by the availability of an array of suitable hosts, an r-selected life history and the release from natural enemies in the invaded zones. Traditional monitoring methods are usually impeded by the lack of time and resources to sufficiently cover large geographical ranges. Therefore, the citizen science initiative "BugMap" was conceived to complement and assist researchers in breaking down the behavior of this invasive pest via a user-friendly, freely available mobile application. The collected data were employed to forecast its predicted distribution and to identify the areas at risk in Trentino, Northern Italy. Moreover, they permitted the uncovering of the seasonal invasion dynamics of this insect, besides providing insight into its phenological patterns, life cycle and potential management methods. Hence, the outcomes of this work emphasize the need to further integrate citizens in scientific endeavors to resolve ecological complications and reduce the gap between the public and science.

Monitoring 2.0: Update on the Halyomorpha halys Invasion of Trentino

“…Since the initiation of this mobile application, the BugMap team, which includes technicians, computer scientists, science communicators, modelers, and entomologists, has been receiving citizen feedback and constantly working toward enhancing citizen involvement. Even though the steps to follow are the same as the ones described in Malek et al [22], registering an H. halys sighting was made easier by refining map visualization, image upload, and ameliorating overall user-experience.…”

“…Using the same environmental predictors applied in Malek et al [22] such as digital elevation models, land-use, hydrography, road networks, and forest tracks, along with all valid BugMap reports obtained so far, we modeled H. halys distribution in MaxEnt (v. 3.3.3) and ran the Jackknife test to determine the variables that reduced the model reliability when omitted. The latter software attempts to estimate a probability distribution of species occurrence that is closest to uniform while still subject to environmental constraints [23].…”

“…In order to increase the model performance, we followed the recommendations of Fourcade et al [24], who suggested undertaking a systematic sampling of the records when the data are biased according to travel time. Performing a systematic sampling over a 500 m grid was found to be the best method to account for BugMap sampling bias [22], and we again randomly selected a single point for each mesh of the grid. In the end, we ran the model using a total of 699 presence locations: 490 points were used to train the model and 209 (30%) for testing.…”

“…This tactic permitted the uncovering of H. halys seasonal invasion dynamics, phenological patterns, and potential management methods in this North Italian region. Monitoring 2.0: coupling traditional monitoring and citizens science, has thus proved effective in unraveling H. halys invasion in Trentino [22]. The objective of this update is to utilize the newly recorded data points to verify the accuracy of our previously calculated model on the projected distribution of the invasive bug in Trentino.…”

Geoinformatics in Citizen Science

“…This special issue received a total of 13 submitted papers with 10 papers accepted [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. The authors' affiliations are distributed in the following countries: Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States.…”