Journal
ECOLOGY
Volume 103, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/ecy.3539
Keywords
canopy walkway; citizen science; forest canopy; herbivory; rainforest; visual estimation
Categories
Funding
- NSF [2101059, 1656625]
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Division Of Integrative Organismal Systems [2101059] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Integrative Organismal Systems
- Direct For Biological Sciences [1656625] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Through the use of visual estimation techniques, citizen science initiatives have helped collect a large amount of herbivory data, confirming that understory leaves have significantly higher herbivory rates than canopy leaves; although younger participants showed some bias, data integrity remained high.
Citizen science (CS) initiatives can transform how some ecological data are collected. Herbivory is a fundamental ecological interaction, but herbivory rates in many natural systems are unknown due in part to lack of personnel for monitoring efforts. This limits our ability to understand broad ecological patterns relevant to herbivory. Fortunately, accurate and reliable visual estimation techniques for assessing herbivory could be amenable to CS approaches. In 2008, I developed a CS training initiative (the Million Leaf Project, MLP) to measure herbivory based on a seven-category visual assessment of leaf area removed (LAR). From 2010 to 2018, 394 citizen scientists assessed damage on 175,421 leaves to test the hypothesis that herbivory varies between understory and canopy leaves in a Peruvian tropical forest. In support of this hypothesis, the longitudinal CS data reveal that understory leaves consistently experience more herbivory than do canopy leaves on average (18.3% vs. 12.3%, P < 0.001), a difference that was consistent regardless of CS observer age. Furthermore, data integrity was high, even though younger participants showed some leaf selection bias. The MLP is based on a simple technique, intended to broaden public participation in ecological science, and applicable to any ecological system in which herbivory or leaf damage occurs.
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