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The impact of RHDV-K5 on rabbit populations in Australia: an evaluation of citizen science surveys to monitor rabbit abundance
The increasing popularity of citizen science in ecological research has created opportunities for data collection from large teams of observers that are widely dispersed. We established a citizen science program to complement the release of a new variant of the rabbit biological control agent, rabbi...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6811621/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31645713 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51847-w |
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author | Cox, Tarnya E. Ramsey, David S. L. Sawyers, Emma Campbell, Susan Matthews, John Elsworth, Peter |
author_facet | Cox, Tarnya E. Ramsey, David S. L. Sawyers, Emma Campbell, Susan Matthews, John Elsworth, Peter |
author_sort | Cox, Tarnya E. |
collection | PubMed |
description | The increasing popularity of citizen science in ecological research has created opportunities for data collection from large teams of observers that are widely dispersed. We established a citizen science program to complement the release of a new variant of the rabbit biological control agent, rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV), known colloquially as K5, across Australia. We evaluated the impact of K5 on the national rabbit population and compared citizen science and professionally-collected spotlight count data. Of the citizen science sites (n = 219), 93% indicated a decrease in rabbit abundance following the release of K5. The overall finite monthly growth rate in rabbit abundance was estimated as 0.66 (95%CI, 0.26, 1.03), averaging a monthly reduction of 34% at the citizen science sites one month after the release. No such declines were observed at the professionally monitored sites (n = 22). The citizen science data submissions may have been unconsciously biased or the number of professional sites may have been insufficient to detect a change. Citizen science participation also declined by 56% over the post-release period. Future programs should ensure the use of blinded trials to check for unconscious bias and consider how incentives and/or the good will of the participants can be maintained throughout the program. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6811621 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-68116212019-10-25 The impact of RHDV-K5 on rabbit populations in Australia: an evaluation of citizen science surveys to monitor rabbit abundance Cox, Tarnya E. Ramsey, David S. L. Sawyers, Emma Campbell, Susan Matthews, John Elsworth, Peter Sci Rep Article The increasing popularity of citizen science in ecological research has created opportunities for data collection from large teams of observers that are widely dispersed. We established a citizen science program to complement the release of a new variant of the rabbit biological control agent, rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV), known colloquially as K5, across Australia. We evaluated the impact of K5 on the national rabbit population and compared citizen science and professionally-collected spotlight count data. Of the citizen science sites (n = 219), 93% indicated a decrease in rabbit abundance following the release of K5. The overall finite monthly growth rate in rabbit abundance was estimated as 0.66 (95%CI, 0.26, 1.03), averaging a monthly reduction of 34% at the citizen science sites one month after the release. No such declines were observed at the professionally monitored sites (n = 22). The citizen science data submissions may have been unconsciously biased or the number of professional sites may have been insufficient to detect a change. Citizen science participation also declined by 56% over the post-release period. Future programs should ensure the use of blinded trials to check for unconscious bias and consider how incentives and/or the good will of the participants can be maintained throughout the program. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-10-23 /pmc/articles/PMC6811621/ /pubmed/31645713 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51847-w Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Cox, Tarnya E. Ramsey, David S. L. Sawyers, Emma Campbell, Susan Matthews, John Elsworth, Peter The impact of RHDV-K5 on rabbit populations in Australia: an evaluation of citizen science surveys to monitor rabbit abundance |
title | The impact of RHDV-K5 on rabbit populations in Australia: an evaluation of citizen science surveys to monitor rabbit abundance |
title_full | The impact of RHDV-K5 on rabbit populations in Australia: an evaluation of citizen science surveys to monitor rabbit abundance |
title_fullStr | The impact of RHDV-K5 on rabbit populations in Australia: an evaluation of citizen science surveys to monitor rabbit abundance |
title_full_unstemmed | The impact of RHDV-K5 on rabbit populations in Australia: an evaluation of citizen science surveys to monitor rabbit abundance |
title_short | The impact of RHDV-K5 on rabbit populations in Australia: an evaluation of citizen science surveys to monitor rabbit abundance |
title_sort | impact of rhdv-k5 on rabbit populations in australia: an evaluation of citizen science surveys to monitor rabbit abundance |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6811621/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31645713 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51847-w |
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