Citizen science (CS) is a currently much promoted and well-funded approach that seeks to stimulate the public to support scientists and vice versa (e.g. www.citizen-science-germany.de; www.buergerschaffenwissen.de). CS has different origins based on different concepts that date back until the mid-nineties, and we here refer to Riesch and Potter (2013) for a short review. We opted to follow the definition provided by the CS Central website operated by the Cornell University Ornithology Lab, which we feel comes closest to our perception of and needs from CS: CS is 'projects in which volunteers partner with scientists to answer real-world questions' (Citizen Science Central 2017). We would, however, add that Citizen Scientists can very well gain extensive experience and expertise through training, participation and encouragement. In the field of biology, this could, for example, eventually lead to the training of parataxonomists and/or paraecologists, which has proven to be a highly productive approach from the social / cultural interaction all the way to a highly productive scientific level (Basset et al. 2000, Novotny et al. 2012).

However, of the data generated by the "usual" CS projects, only a few (12% out of 388 projects) are being published in peer-reviewed scientific articles (Theobald et al. 2015). This should be a strong incentive to create a platform that can connect professional scientists and citizen science in order to create more sustainable outcomes.

In a way, many taxonomists always were and still are highly advanced citizen scientists, i.e. extremely motivated amateurs educating themselves and often growing into world-leading authorities in their particular field. And recently, there has been increasing cooperation and exchange between such taxonomists and "professional" scientists (i.e. those whose job description includes taxonomy and systematics etc.). An example is DNA barcoding projects where museum scientists rely heavily on the expertise of amateur taxonomists who are often the only ones with knowledge of the taxonomy and ecology of certain taxa. Reassuringly, this has also led to co-authored publications (e.g. Rulik et al. (2017)). But these are experiments that were made in central Europe where communication among scientists and other stakeholders is usually well developed and access to taxonomic knowledge is comparably easy due to the existence of significant historical library and collection resources.

However, most of the world’s biodiversity is not in central Europe, but in tropical countries where it is not always easy, even for professional taxonomists, to access data and exchange ideas, let alone citizens access adequate resources.

At the same time, internet utilization is growing worldwide. Particularly in developing countries, in 2015 the adult internet user and mobile technology ownership reached 54% and 37% of the total population respectively and social networking usage is likely to be higher than in developed countries (Pousther 2016). Therefore, information accumulation and exchange around the globe becomes easier and faster. This new internet technology can be used by taxonomists and other interested citizens for educational and scientific purposes and this is the scope of the present study.

Here, we describe a simple approach (Fig. 1) to cooperate with a citizen scientist. In this case, in Bali, Indonesia, with the goal to conduct a sustainable, scientific experiment using (1) simple, existing technology and (2) enable this citizen scientist to actively participate in the experiment, at the same time (3) building capacity and (4) thus enable this citizen scientist to become part of an interactive scientific community and develop taxonomic skills. That citizen scientist is the tourist operator Suprayitno, the first author of this paper, who discovered his interest in entomology in 2016 as a simple pastime, being a fully independent and self-funded hobbyist. He established contact with the international entomological community via a Facebook group and thereby got attracted strongly to aquatic insects. Discussions and specimen identifications were made online on the social media site Facebook and via WhatsApp, which prove a powerful tool to exchange ideas and especially photographs of sufficient quality in order to help the citizen scientist to expand his taxonomic knowledge quickly. At the same time, discussion partners generated awareness of the CS that specimens and data should be stored in a sustainable manner, leading to the donation of his samples to the national depository of zoology, the Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense, which now houses the entire aquatic beetle collection from Bali. Thus, a pastime was strongly and quickly developed into a serious scientific activity with the aid of social media. This led to a CS project, to the development of taxonomic skills and to objective contributions to a large national museum collection.

Figure 1.  

Workflow for this and especially future projects as proposed in this study.

This is the focus of our study. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by providing empirical data on the biogeography (faunistics) and taxonomy of selected Balinese aquatic Coleoptera because the fauna of Bali is comparably well known and the species selected for our study can be identified based on photographs taken with a handphone camera. The longer-term project goal is an extensive inventory of the Balinese fauna, for which we will propose a collaborative project in the future.

Hardware

Workflow

Handphone digital imaging resources

Here, we provide the original images taken with a handphone camera and publicized via WhatsApp and Facebook as the starting point of the present project.

Allopachria quadripustulata (Fig. 2).

Figure 2.  

Allopachria quadripustulata, HP image from BALI_NS_2016_09.

Cybister tripunctatus (Figs 3, 4)

Figure 3.  

Dytiscidae image taken with handphone camera BALI_NS_2016_05 (large specimen: Cybister tripunctatus temnenkii; two smaller beetles above the Cybister: Hydaticus fabricii; four specimens on the left: Hydaticus bipunctatus conjungens).

Figure 4.  

Cybister tripunctatus, HP image from Bali.

Eretes griseus (Figs 5, 6, 7, Fig. 8).

Figure 5.  

Eretes griseus, HP image from BALI_NS_2016_19 (background: Hydaticus bipunctatus conjungens).

Figure 6.  

Eretes griseus, HP image from BALI_NS_2016_34.

Figure 7.  

Eretes griseus, HP image from Bali.

Figure 8.  

Eretes griseus, foto of Balinese specimen kept in aquarium.

Hydaticus bipunctatus conjungens (Figs 3, 5).

Hydaticus fabricii (Fig. 3).

Hydaticus luczonicus (Fig. 9).

Figure 9.  

Hydaticus luczonicus, HP image from BALI_NS_2016_16.

Hydaticus pacificus (Fig. 10).

Figure 10.  

Hydaticus pacificus, HP image from BALI_NS_2016_17.

Microdytes elgae (Fig. 11).

Figure 11.  

Microdytes elgae, HP image from BALI_NS_2016_07.

Sandracottus hunteri (Fig. 12).

Figure 12.  

Sandracottus hunteri, HP image from BALI_NS_2016_18.

Participation of MB and TvR was made possible with support from BMBF Biodiversity & Health Program, project 16GW0112 (Working Phase 6.4, 6 PM MfN), which is greatly acknowledged.