Citizen science to investigate a new species of beetle

Irene Vega

Citizen science is a booming method that consists of the participation of non-scientific citizens in research projects by collecting data, processing these or other types of associated tasks, which they develop under the supervision of a professional researcher. The main advantages of this procedure are the possibility of having a high number of participants, the immediacy in monitoring the data or the low processing time, thus becoming an indispensable and complementary tool to classical research.

The researcher Fernando Cortés-Fossati, a member of the Evolutionary Ecology Group of the Biodiversity and Conservation area of ​​the URJC, has used this method to carry out research on a new species of beetle or beetle (berberomeloe payoyo) in order to delineate its geographical distribution. "This work has been possible thanks to the synergy of data from academic science (sampling campaigns for the most part), but also from citizen science, which has been essential in the study", highlights the researcher. "In the rest of Europe, it is a very common, long-standing practice with a large number of participants, which has been successfully applied to different groups of organisms, such as beetles, butterflies or birds," he adds. .

The species studied, included under the name of another (Berberomeloe majalis), had gone unnoticed until 2020. However, research in molecular biology, carried out by a team from the Museum of Natural Sciences of Madrid, showed that this supposed species was actually several very similar, but morphologically and genetically distinguishable. In this way, the species Berberomeloe majalis was divided into nine different ones, giving rise to different endemic species for which no data was available regarding their ecology, biology or distribution. “The species we have studied, called berberomeloe payoyo, lives only in the province of Cádiz, Málaga and a small region of Granada. It is known locally as 'band-aid' and is postulated as the second largest beetle in Europe after the flying deer. It can reach, in the case of adult females, about 7 cm in total length”, explains Fernando Cortés-Fossati.

Geographical distribution of the studied species, berberomeloe payoyo

Method for the study of insects pioneer in Spain

Through the collaboration of hundreds of volunteers, during the investigation it has been possible to cover extensive areas that would otherwise have been unreachable in a reasonable period of time. This beetle has one of the most complex developments in the animal kingdom, having up to seven phases before reaching the adult state, which makes its study difficult. However, its adult form is unmistakable to the inhabitants of the region. “Both the dorsal banding of the orange color that it presents in its abdomen and the pharmacological uses of traditional medicine that were given to the hemolymph of these insects, make it an animal that is very recognizable by citizens and, therefore, an ideal candidate. for a citizen science project. In fact, it is the first time that this type of tool has been applied to the study of these insects in Spain and the results have been very positive”, points out the researcher.

El work has been published in the international journal of Zoology Bonn Zoological Bulletin and it is expected to apply this method to other endemic Iberian species of arthropods for which fundamental information is not yet available for their understanding. Currently, insects, key organisms for the functioning of all ecosystems in the world, are suffering great impacts on their populations and, despite the breadth of studies dedicated to this group, there are still many fundamental aspects that suffer from information gaps, such as distribution maps, fundamental tools for conservation ecology.

The study has been carried out in collaboration with the Ministry of the Environment and Territory Planning of the Andalusian Government and, in its citizen science aspect, with the organizations Observation España, iNaturalist and Virtual Biodiversity, which have made databases available to them. own data with records of these insects and have hosted delivery platforms on their servers so that users could send their data to research centrally.