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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Environ. Sci.

Sec. Environmental Citizen Science

Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1566160

The longer, the better? Assessing the results of an eight-year citizen science initiative targeting protected insect species

Provisionally accepted
Silvia Gisondi Silvia Gisondi 1Alice Lenzi Alice Lenzi 2,3*Marco Bardiani Marco Bardiani 4Cristina Blandino Cristina Blandino 2Sönke Hardersen Sönke Hardersen 4Emanuela Maurizi Emanuela Maurizi 1Fabio Mosconi Fabio Mosconi 1Gianluca Nardi Gianluca Nardi 4Pio Federico Roversi Pio Federico Roversi 2Alessandro Campanaro Alessandro Campanaro 2
  • 1 Research Centre for Plant Protection and Certification (CREA), Roma, Lazio, Italy
  • 2 CREA, Research Centre for Plant Protection and Certification,, Florence, Italy
  • 3 Department of Life Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Tuscany, Italy
  • 4 National Center for the Study and Conservation of the Forestry Biodiversity "Bosco Fontana" Carabinieri, Verona, Veneto, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Citizen science has been proven to be a valuable approach to collect data at large scales and can be of particular interest especially if it meets the requirements of the Habitats Directive, a key piece of European Union environmental legislation that orients policies of member states about conservation actions and protected species and habitats monitoring. In Italy, only few citizen science projects are dedicated to the collection of data on insect species, and rarer are the ones focusing on protected insect species. A long-term initiative focused on protected species and habitats started in 2012 as the “LIFE MIPP” project and continued afterwards as the “InNat” project up until 2024. The above-mentioned initiative focused on 40 protected targets, including insects, crustaceans, plants and habitats. Results: A total of 6,130 records, collected by more than 1,400 volunteers between 2014 and 2021, were analyzed focusing on the increase of the distributional knowledge of nine insect species. On average, 83% of records were considered valid in terms of correct species identification, with more than 60% of records collected outside protected areas. Analyses revealed a clear statistically significant increase in the number of records and in distributional data coverage over the years is recorded (i.e., number of occupied UTM cells and variation of shape/density of data distribution), though most of the considered species did not reach ‘saturation’ yet. Conclusions: Our project significantly contributed to increase knowledge on the distribution of protected insect species thus stressing the importance of similar long-term initiatives, also fostering a more conscious management and design of protected areas.

    Keywords: volunteering, Habitats directive, Beetles, Butterflies, Distribution data

    Received: 24 Jan 2025; Accepted: 27 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Gisondi, Lenzi, Bardiani, Blandino, Hardersen, Maurizi, Mosconi, Nardi, Roversi and Campanaro. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Alice Lenzi, CREA, Research Centre for Plant Protection and Certification,, Florence, Italy

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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