Citizen Science: Research Gone Wild

Knowing the genetic diversity of the plants growing around us equips us with knowledge to understand how they face stress, intruders, as well as how they grow and develop. Countries are placing seeds in deep vaults in the Arctic to save them for future generations, but not all plants produce seeds. A citizen science project has laid the foundation for a unique living collection of liverworts, a group of often overlooked non-seed plants with a rich diversity in the UK, and potential to contribute to improving crops and our fundamental understanding of plants.

Citizen science is invaluable for ecological monitoring. Many citizen-led data collection projects have highlighted trends in populations that would otherwise lack information. Though questions remain: how do we interpret citizen collected data? What use can we make of it? Bias in the locations that are surveyed or potential for misidentification are possible challenges in monitoring species. However, citizen volunteers do create robust data and linking citizen science projects together can illuminate new behaviours in species and capture the impacts of human activity of biodiversity.