Badger, seemingly setting off on a long journey (image: Scottish Wildcat Action)
|
|
|
|
Welcome to MammalWeb's February update! We hope you've been surviving the relentless winter storms and maybe even enjoying a slightly calmer spell (if not a warmer one). We were going to send updates approximately quarterly but, just two months after making that decision, we find ourselves with things to say. We hope you'll forgive our prolixity! In this update, we have more on Zosia Ladd's competition project (and your chance to win a camera trap), an update on the National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme, team news (including comings, goings and new research), and news of an upcoming social event for those in the Durham area. Read on ...
|
The Wild London competition |
It’s been a couple of months since we launched the Wild London project and we’re very appreciative of all the classifications we’ve had so far! Our most common species by far are dogs, foxes and squirrels, with over 10,000 observations of each, so far. Although our project mainly focuses on mammals, our cameras have picked up some great shots of birds, with lots of Eurasian jays, green woodpeckers and even a woodcock. We still have lots more sequences, and anyone who helps out up to the end of February has a chance to win prizes! Each sequence classified for the project counts as an entry, and winners will be announced in March. - Zosia Ladds
|
Birds of the Wild London project: jay (top) and woodcock (below) (images: zladders)
|
MammalWeb activity, December to January |
Huge congratulations to all those who made the top-20 over the past 2 months - but, as always, huge thanks, too, to everyone else who has submitted classifications, helping us to monitor our wild mammals. Last time we sent out a newsletter, we were excited to note our approach towards the 1 million sequences milestone. Excitingly, we've smashed that, with a whopping 1.2 million sequences now in our database!!! Thanks to all who've submitted their footage to build this resource! Of course, those data will be most useful once we know what's in them, so if you have a bit of spare time and fancy searching for some of our elusive wildlife, every classification helps!
|
First, we’re excited to welcome Charlotte Sharpe to the team. Charlotte joins us from the University of St Andrews. She says:
“My main interests in biology are conservation ecology and the monitoring of wild animal populations. However, my biological curiosity remains wide-ranging. I also spend a lot of my free time in search of animals to photograph, most frequently birds and deer.
“My past experience in conservation ecology stems from time spent volunteering as a research assistant with a long-term project surveying the animal populations in Krka National Park, Croatia, with the purpose of informing local management strategies for native animals. During this experience I was exposed to the importance of using different survey strategies for different groups of animals to inform effective local policy.
“My current MSc research concerns small mammal monitoring in the UK. Although camera traps are frequently called upon to monitor larger mammals, small mammals are often difficult to identify from the images gathered with traditional camera trap methodologies. My research will therefore aim to gather data on the small mammal populations in the North-East of England using modified camera traps that are more suitable for distinguishing between species of small mammals. There will be an overarching aim of determining the local status of a newly invasive species to the British Isles, the greater white toothed shrew (Crocidura russala). This species of shrew has the potential to threaten native small mammal populations and, therefore, assessing its presence using camera traps could provide valuable data to inform management strategies.”
|
|
Charlotte, who started her Masters by Research in January
|
Second, congratulations and farewell to Dr Emily Baker! Emily conducted her PhD in Durham, focusing on the issue of the verification of citizen science data. Some of you will remember the overview of the issue with which she shaped her ideas (if not, you can read it here). She went on to think about how aspects of the context – such as time of day, season, or habitat – of an observation (a direct sighting, some indirect sign, or a photograph, for example) might influence our belief in its accuracy. She also looked into whether we could reach conviction more rapidly by considering the past observations made by individuals. Finally, she explored the extent to which lower thresholds for verification (i.e., believing a record with less evidence for doing so) might affect interpretations of management significance. She will be working on publications to summarise the outcomes of these investigations, and we will report on those in due course. We thank Emily’s examiners (Dr Sally Street, Durham University, and Dr Nick Isaac, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) for a robust but very helpful examination of the thesis. We also wish Emily all the best in her new role at the National Biodiversity Network!
|
|
Dr Emily Baker, now working with the NBN
|
Last, some of you might have helped to classify pictures from cameras in the National Parks of Hungary, via the MammalNet project. The Hungarian element of MammalNet was initiated in 2019 by Bálint Ternyik, as part of a research project whilst studying for an integrated masters degree at Durham University. Bálint was particularly interested to know more about the abundance of wild boar in Hungary, owing to high interest then (as now) in the distribution and numbers of wild boar across the continent, given their potential role in the spread of African swine fever. Recently, Bálint published a paper that emerged from his work at Durham University. You can read the paper here. The particular focus of the paper was on the possibility of using the average size of animals to estimate their distance from camera traps. Many of you might be aware that estimating the distance of animals from camera traps is a key step in determining the effective area that they survey which, in turn, is essential to using camera traps to estimate the density of animals in the region. Bálint examined the approach (termed ‘optical camera trap distance estimation’) by applying it to a number of scenarios and datasets, including that arising from the Hungarian project. There are, inevitably, numerous limitations to the accuracy achievable using this method. Nevertheless, it shows considerable promise, especially given that many datasets exist to which alternative methods of distance estimation – such as distance-calibration of individual sites, or the ideal of stereoscopic photography – cannot be applied, retrospectively. Overall, Bálint estimated the density of wild boar in Bükk National Park to be in the order of one animal per two square kms. This is lower than in many parts of western Eurasia, possibly owing to a reasonably intensive cull in the area in 2019. The estimate serves as a baseline and current ‘best guess’ for the area, subject to refined approaches to density estimation.
|
|
Schematic of the process outlined in Bálint's new paper
|
MammalWeb social event in the Durham area |
It is a long time (pre-covid!) since members of the MammalWeb core team and other contributors met up socially. We are planning to do so, in Durham, on the evening of the 28th of February. If you are in the area and would like to find out more, potentially joining us for a convivial evening of mammal-related discussion (and maybe even more wide-ranging conversation, if we're feeling adventurous), please get in touch (ideally before Friday the 16th of February)!
|
Join us for a social event in the Durham area (image: hotpot.ai/art-generator)
|
Update on the National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme |
In December, we told you a little about the National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme Project, coordinated by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species. We also described the involvement of MammalWeb members in running a Durham survey in October. We are still not quite ready to launch the project formally, but that announcement is not far away and we will soon be able to open up the project for spotting. In the meantime, a lot of work has been going on behind the scenes at MammalWeb to get things ready. Over 340,000 sequences have been uploaded to the platform over the last 6 months from surveys conducted across the country (including over 28,000 sequences from our Durham survey). That is a huge number of images to classify! We updated you, last year, on our partnership with ConservationAI, based at Liverpool John Moores University, to integrate AI image recognition into MammalWeb. We are now using that capacity to optimise the images we display for classification so that we can be as effective as possible (hopefully, improving the spotting experience at the same time). We are currently working through the final stages of testing ahead of the launch. We know we said this last time, but keep an eye out for updates, very soon!
|
|
|
|
Fox carrying a mystery package (top); Badger exploring a lawn (middle); fox scrutinising camera trap number 22 (images: the Durham NHMP team)
|
We've been enjoying some "Liked" images of pairs of mammals in people's gardens. Here are some that have crossed our paths - but if you have other examples, we'd love to see them!
|
From top to bottom (image credits): badger and fox (Muddyspringer); grey squirrel with young (the Durham NHMP team); badger and hedgehog (tpw)
|
|
|
|
|