Sheard Julie K, Sanders Nathan J, Gundlach Carsten, Schär Sämi, Larsen Rasmus Stenbak
Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, Globe Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Environmental Program, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA.
PeerJ. 2020 Apr 8;8:e8850. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8850. eCollection 2020.
Climate change and invasive species threaten biodiversity, yet rigorous monitoring of their impact can be costly. Citizen science is increasingly used as a tool for monitoring exotic species, because citizens are geographically and temporally dispersed, whereas scientists tend to cluster in museums and at universities. Here we report on the establishment of the first exotic ant taxon () in Denmark, which was discovered by children participating in The Ant Hunt. The Ant Hunt is a citizen science project for children that we ran in 2017 and 2018, with a pilot study in 2015. was discovered in the Botanical Garden of the Natural History Museum of Denmark in 2015 and confirmed as established in 2018. This finding extends the northern range boundary of by almost 460 km. Using climatic niche modelling, we compared the climatic niche of in Europe with that of based on confirmed observations from 2006 to 2019. and had a 13% niche overlap, with showing stronger occurrence in warmer and drier areas compared to . Mapping the environmental niches onto geographic space identified several, currently uninhabited, areas as climatically suitable for the establishment of . was sampled almost three times as often in areas with artificial surfaces compared to , suggesting that may not be native to all of Europe and is being accidentally introduced by humans. Overall, citizen scientists collected data on ants closer to cities and harbours than scientists did and had a stronger bias towards areas of human disturbance. This increased sampling effort in areas of likely introduction of exotic species naturally increases the likelihood of discovering species sooner, making citizen science an excellent tool for exotic species monitoring, as long as trained scientists are involved in the identification process.
气候变化和入侵物种威胁着生物多样性，然而对其影响进行严格监测可能成本高昂。公民科学越来越多地被用作监测外来物种的工具，因为公民在地理和时间上分布分散，而科学家往往集中在博物馆和大学。在这里，我们报告了丹麦首次发现外来蚂蚁分类群（）的情况，这是由参与“蚂蚁狩猎”活动的儿童发现的。“蚂蚁狩猎”是一项面向儿童的公民科学项目，我们在2017年和2018年开展了该项目，并在2015年进行了试点研究。于2015年在丹麦自然历史博物馆的植物园中被发现，并于2018年被确认为已定居。这一发现使的北部分布范围边界扩展了近460公里。利用气候生态位建模，我们根据2006年至2019年的确认观测数据，比较了欧洲的气候生态位与的气候生态位。和的生态位重叠率为13%，与相比，在温暖和干燥地区的出现频率更高。将环境生态位映射到地理空间上，确定了几个目前无人居住但气候适合定居的地区。与相比，在有人工表面的地区被采样的频率几乎是其三倍，这表明可能并非原产于整个欧洲，而是被人类意外引入的。总体而言，公民科学家收集蚂蚁数据的地点比科学家更靠近城市和港口，并且对人类干扰区域的偏向性更强。在可能引入外来物种的地区增加采样工作自然会增加更早发现物种的可能性，只要有受过训练的科学家参与鉴定过程，公民科学就是监测外来物种的绝佳工具。
