Enhancing Diversity Knowledge through Marine Citizen Science and Social Platforms: The Case of Hermodice carunculata (Annelida, Polychaeta)

Abstract

The aim of this research is to set a successful strategy for engaging citizen marine scientists and to obtain reliable data on marine species. The case study of this work is the bearded fireworm Hermodice carunculata, a charismatic species spreading from the southern Mediterranean probably in relation to global warming. To achieve research objectives, some emerging technologies (mainly social platforms) were combined with web ecological knowledge (i.e., data, pictures and videos about the target species published on the WWW for non-scientific purposes) and questionnaires, in order to invite people to collect ecological data on the amphinomid worm from the Adriatic Sea and to interact with involved people. In order to address future fruitful citizen science campaigns, strengths and weakness of each used method were illustrated; for example, the importance of informing and thanking involved people by customizing interactions with citizens was highlighted. Moreover, a decisive boost in people engagement may be obtained through sharing the information about citizen science project in online newspapers. Finally, the work provides novel scientific information on the polychete’s distribution, the northernmost occurrence record of H. carunculata in the Mediterranean Sea and new insights on predatory behavior on other living benthic species.

Development and catch efficiency of an attracting device to collect and monitor the invasive fireworm Hermodice carunculata in the Mediterranean Sea

“…The reconstruction of H. carunculata distribution along the Italian Peninsula and its changes during the last 50 years has confirmed a trend of expansion consistent with the northward displacement of the 14° C isotherm of February (Righi et al, 2020). Fireworms are moving farther and farther northward than in the past, and have reached the coasts of Sardinia, the Tuscan Archipelago (Tyrrhenian Sea, Western Mediterranean Sea) and the northernmost Croatian islands (Adriatic Sea) (Krželj et al, 2020;Righi et al, 2020). Also, although this species had not previously been reported in the list of marine annelids from continental Spain (Parapar et al, 2012), populations have been recently observed along the coasts of Andalusia and Murcia (Coma et al, 2011;Righi et al, 2020) and towards the south-western Iberian Peninsula (Encarnação et al, 2019).…”

“…In the Mediterranean, H. carunculata has already become the target of citizen science initiatives, such as the occurrence records collected along the Croatian Archipelago between 2006 and 2019 by dive centers/citizens using social platforms (Krželj et al, 2020). Informed citizens could be extremely instrumental in helping scientists to track fireworm presence and expansion and in warning about underwater environments that seem to have been critically damaged by H. carunculata specimens.…”

“…An uncontrolled increase in H. carunculata density has been claimed along the coasts of Apulia, Sicily, and Calabria: this occurrence can represent a potential risk for both benthic ecosystems and "sea users" such as fishermen, scuba divers and beach goers (Krželj et al, 2020;Righi et al, 2020). Along the Southern coasts of Italy, H. carunculata even colonizes the shallow depths popular with tourists, who can encounter the fireworms while in the water (Righi et al, 2020).…”

The Reef Check Mediterranean Underwater Coastal Environment Monitoring Protocol

“…The data comes from Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Tunisia, covering part of the following ecoregions (sensu Spalding et al, 2007): Western Mediterranean (52.3% of the surveys), Adriatic Sea (42.2%), Ionian Sea (4.9%), Alboran Sea (0.2%), Aegean Sea (0.2%), and Tunisian Plateau/Gulf of Sidra (0.2%). The possibility to focus on a few target species during the underwater surveys ensures a higher accuracy of the data collection: EcoDivers select the species based on confidence (thereby reducing identification errors), personal interest (increasing satisfaction), or because some species are more charismatic than others (KrŽelj et al, 2020). Although never assessed, a reduced number of species to consider may reduce psychological stress during the surveys; however, this generates skewed distribution efforts among the searched taxa and surveyed coastal habitats.…”

People’s contribution to the knowledge of Pycnogonida: citizen science in the case of a “problematic” taxon.

“…Marine citizen science projects occurred on geographical scales ranging from local to global, with the majority acting at national level; most of them focused on coastal environments and were aimed at outlining species distribution (Earp & Liconti, 2019). Obviously, there is a bias among marine fauna taxa in terms of detectability and ease of identification (see Chengeux et al, 2020), with an imbalance towards vertebrates, but also some invertebrate groups are the subject of specific campaigns (Earp & Liconti, 2019;Krželj et al, 2020;Sandahl & Tøttrup, 2020;Garcia-Soto et al, 2021): for instance, "Crab Watch" is a citizen science project monitoring Europe's crab species (Website 1). In particular, divers represent a heterogeneous group of people in terms of interests and culture (see Hermoso et al, 2020Hermoso et al, , 2021 but due to their high number and global distribution they potentially can give a significant contribution to research, especially on shallow and coastal water environments.…”