Tag: ecology

How Citizen Scientists Are Helping Sharks Around the World

Mike Bear had just slipped underwater, offshore near San Diego, and was floating among the long fronds of a kelp forest when a long shadow passed between him and his diving partner. Gliding by, nearly within arm’s reach, was the sleek bulk of a sevengill shark, which Bear estimated at about nine feet long. “To […]

Read More
Categories: Animals

A study led by researchers at the University of Maine spearheaded a new approach to finding where ticks love to lurk. The Maine Forest Tick Survey trained hundreds of woodland owners in Maine to systematically comb their properties for disease-toting ticks to discern how forest management may influence the pest’s prevalence. Ticks pose a growing […]

Read More
Categories: Animals, Ecology & Environment
Hands hold up a smartphone camera to take a photo of an open field with trees in the background, near a Chronolog signpost.

This post is by SciStarter guest contributor Jake Rose. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then over 20,000 photos are definitely very valuable. That’s one of the first lessons learned by the leaders of Chronolog, a citizen science project that uses crowd-sourced photos to create time-lapse images of places changing over time. Chronolog and […]

Read More
Categories: Guest Contributor

Dig into even more Thanksgiving projects with your friends and family! Imagine: After months of treacherous sailing across the open ocean, skirting coral reefs and rocky shores, you alight upon lush tropical islands greeted by enticing aromas, unknown species, and a symphony of bird song… Four years into her circumnavigation of the globe, the HMS […]

Read More
Categories: Animals, Apps, Biology, Birds, Citizen Science, Ecology & Environment, Nature & Outdoors

Hunting for Bugs at BioBlitz

They found paper wasps, cactus flies and fruit flies. They saw dragonflies and butterflies zooming about. And when they peered into bushes like hackberry and creosote they saw ants, termites and ground beetles living underneath. They even found beetles in an old soda can.

Read More
Categories: Citizen Science

On June 1, 2011 at 11:51 PM, a group of people assembled on the beach in Northpoint, New York. There was no moon shining that night, not even a sliver. The people carried flashlights or wore headlamps. They held clipboards and paper.

Their mission: to report where horseshoe crabs were spotted along the beach.

This was just one of several places along New York’s shoreline where people collect data about horseshoe crabs. Volunteers also amassed on dark beaches in Stony Brook, Staten Island, Brooklyn and Westhampton. In all, volunteers monitored the comings and goings of horseshoe crabs at ten New York beaches that night.

They are a part of the New York Horseshoe Crab Monitoring Network, a group of citizen scientists who are documenting where horseshoe crabs emerge from the water to lay eggs along beaches in New York State. On specific dates through the spring and early summer, participants collect data about the number of horseshoe crabs and identify their size and sex. They attach tags to the horseshoe crabs bulky exoskeleton and look for tags from prior years.

Read More
Categories: Animals, Biology, Citizen Science, Ecology & Environment, Ocean & Water

What is SciStarter?

SciStarter is the place to find, join, and contribute to science through more than 3,000 formal and informal research projects, events and tools. Our community of citizen science projects enables discovery, organization, and greater participation in science. This is also the place to track your contributions, bookmark things you like, and network with others. Join SciStarter to get started.

Connect with us

You can also signup for our newsletter.

Categories