Participatory Science: Your Involvement Matters

The public's involvement in invasive species work is a powerful tool in successful management. Angie Ambourn, Entomologist from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and Angela Gupta, Regional Extension Educator at the University of Minnesota, introduce the topic of participatory science, explore why it is important, share successful past projects, and provide more ways for the public to get involved on the latest episode of Smarty Plants.

Smarty Plants is a podcast of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. Visit www.mda.state.mn.us/plants-insects/smarty-plants for more episodes. Look for a new episode of Smarty Plants every month.

Transcript

Jennifer Burington: 0:20

Welcome to Smarty Plants, a Minnesota Department of Agriculture podcast, informing the public about invasive species that affect our environment and agricultural resources. My name is Jennifer Burington, and I will be your host. Public involvement in plant Pest science is essential. I. Participatory science engages students, volunteers, and others to engage research efforts and generate data that allows better environmental management and protection. Angie, Amborn from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and Angela Gupta from the University of Minnesota Extension Office are here today to discuss the basics of participatory science, some recent success stories, and more ways you can get involved. Angie is an entomologist with the MDA Plant Protection Division. She's worked with the MDA for 10 years now and holds a bachelor's degree in biology, as well as a master's in entomology from the University of Minnesota Entomology Department. She's worked in entomology for over 20 years in Alaska, South Dakota, Wyoming, and now Minnesota, where she currently supervises a team of 10 invasive species specialists. Welcome, Angie. We're so happy to have you with us today. Thanks. Angela Gupta is a University of Minnesota extension professor of forestry who specializes in terrestrial invasive species. She's done invasive species early detection education and outreach, including participatory science from crowdsourcing to community science since about 2008. Angela has been a key leader of the University of Minnesota extension's invasive species community of practice since its inception in 2016, and is a key leader in the effort to improve invasive species. Common names. Angela Co-created the Empower You Course to engage decision makers about invasive species. Angela earned a master's in organizational management from Spring Arbor University and a bachelor's in forestry from the University of Kentucky. Prior to joining Extension, Angela was an industrial forester working with private landowners in Michigan and a US Peace Corps, agroforestry and Extensionist in Kenya, east Africa. Welcome, Angela. We're happy you're have you here today. Thank you. So to get started for our talk here today, what is participatory science and why is it important for protecting plants from pests? If you wanna take a stab at this, Angela.

Angela Gupta: 2:41

Yeah, thanks so much. So participatory science is science in which the community involved and. Typically they're involved in four different components of science, and it's kind of all the things. So establishing the question, so what is the question that we're trying to answer? Gathering the data, so collecting the information to help us answer that critical question, interpreting the data, helping us understand what we found, and then finally distributing the data back to the community. And so one of the really great things about participatory science is that it can enable the community to ask those questions, which are most critical to the community, and then to help understand how to sort of solve the problem through that question. Formation, data gathering, data interpretation, and data distribution.

Jennifer Burington: 3:23

So that's a lot of data and that's a lot of information. So what are the essential elements of participatory science and how do they play out in plant protection?

Angela Gupta: 3:34

Yeah, so some of the most common things that people will recognize is just data collection. So if you, um, enter something into iNaturalist, you're collecting data. If you report something to edm maps, early detection, distribution system mapping. Then you are collecting data. And so a lot of people understand that it's a little less common that people will be engaged in the question formation, but it is a thing that I think people really love to do. So one example is when jumping worms were new, and gardeners were really pretty stressed out about jumping worms and there's no scientifically recommended management. So they would call me and they would be very upset and they wouldn't know what to do, and it was a totally reasonable question for which we did not have good answers. So I ended up creating a project in which I asked gardeners who had jumping worms to journal what they were doing, and so then they could be a part of understanding, observing the environment, collecting that data. The question was really, how can I manage jumping worms? And so they were able to tell me all the things that they did, solarization. What kinds of products they put out, what kinds of observations they made, what plants were doing well or doing poorly as a result of that. And so it was really powerful and that project ended up lasting for three years. Um, and then we were able to also use volunteers to, to, to essentially gather the data in year one, interpret the data, try again, do the scientific process a second time, that's what science is. And then finally to help distribute, distribute the data in a number of different capacities. So I think that's a really great. Great example of the whole circle of participatory science. Yeah.

Jennifer Burington: 5:08

I remember when they were first started out and everybody was trying to figure out what to do and because of everybody all managing it and trying to manage it at the same time, we were able to learn a lot from them.

Angie Amborn: 5:20

Yeah, it was good. So I would add to that from. From a, a detection standpoint, which is one of the things that we do here at the Department of Ag is that we, in, in terms of elements of what a person that is. You know, participating in these types of projects needs to be aware of, or some of those elements are. And a lot of the apps that we have now for using these are, are really great and ask you to do these things. But like in terms of data collection, we're asking, you know, where are you in space? Right? Like. Do you have coordinates? Can you put a point on a map? Um, did you take a picture? We, some of those basic elements, um, are really important. Um, you know, kind of just bringing it down to what you do, what, what, what the people that are participating do day to day when they're entering and doing that data collection. And all of those things are important for, for managers. And those of us that are like tracking invasive species or need to know where they are, um, and or how often. And then oftentimes with these projects, that data will turn into a larger project like Angie suggested or Angie did.

Jennifer Burington: 6:35

So you've covered one, um, kind of project already here, but what are some examples of other, uh, participatory science projects specifically in Minnesota?

Angela Gupta: 6:44

Yeah, so first I'm gonna sort of. Peel back and pause a little bit and say, we are using the term partic participatory science because it's a good term and it includes lots of different types of science. There's a similar term out there called citizen science, which I think is a synonym for participatory science, but is a little bit more limited and it. Inadvertently references a legal status of a person for which we don't care. And so we are very intentionally using the term participatory science, and I encourage others to use that term. And so participatory science is that whole gamut of things from crowdsourcing. So just plugging data into iNaturalist to really community led and community driven science. And so it's, it's the whole suite of i of different participatory science activities and, and I think it's a, generally a better term. So I just wanna say that. But you asked a question. That was really great about other types of participatory science. And so I have one example that I wanna share. So there was a project. So back in 20 19, 20 18, Emerald Ashmore was killing a lot of ash trees in Southeast Minnesota. And the twin cities and community foresters were planting a number of different trees to fill in those spaces that were created by dead ash trees. And one of them was a, a tree called Amer Cork Tree. And Amer Cork Tree. There's a male and a female similar to buckthorn. So males produce, uh, they don't produce berries and females do, and there was some evidence or speculation that the male trees were producing fruit, which is. Interesting and wasn't in line with what many of the urban foresters were trying to do, which was put the male trees in to prevent them from potentially becoming invasive by not producing that fruit. Right? So they'd put it in the mail so there wouldn't be any fruit. And so if the males were producing fruit, that was a super curious thing and it. General consensus was, there were probably two reasons for that. Either it was a supply chain issue, so they were purchasing males and inadvertently getting delivered females. So that's a consumer supply chain issue that could be dealt with in a certain way. The other was that, are these trees themselves switching genders? Are they becoming, they're going for male and becoming female, and we know that trees can do this. Ginkgo is a good example of the research that shows that this, this happens. And so in 2019, uh, we decided to, to see if we could use participatory sciences to sort this out. And so when I started asking around the traditional way in which we would do this is scientists would get a long-term grant, like 20 years, and they would put a bunch of trees in the ground and they would wait for those trees to grow and become sexually mature. And then they would see if they produced fruit. And I said, well. Can't we sex the flower? Like can't volunteers do this? And a lot of shoulders chugging, a lot of, I don't know, we've never done that before. And so I said, let's try it. And then 2020 happened and the pandemic closed the world. And this was one of the few things that people could still do. You could easily do it. While social distancing, many of the urban foresters generously gave us the locations of where they had planted these trees. So we could sort of generally send people out to the right place. And so I had participatory science go out there and use him. An advanced feature within ED maps that, that distribution mapping system that we love, pe, PE for people to report to. We went out and had them take pictures of the flowers. And really importantly, to what Angie said, we had pictures so we could do identification of the tree, we could clearly sex the flower, and we had location data. So we had all like the key attributes. So we sent volunteers out and we were able to, to sex those flowers and see whether the trees were male or female, regardless of what they were intended to be when planted, we could, we could figure that out from the tree itself, given its flower. And then we sent those volunteers back after leaf out, a leaf off rather. So after the fall when you could better see any potential berries. And what we found was over 30% of the trees that were. Had may flowers, produced berries. And so then we were able to prove in one growing season using volunteers that indeed it was a tree issue and not necessarily a supply chain chain issue. And so that was really powerful. So that data became part of the public record. And so then when the Minnesota no Noxious Weed advisory Committee reviewed that species Amer cork tree for potential listing on the Minnesota noxious weed list and law, then they added a stipulation that. Any fruit producing AM or pork trees in the state would need to be killed. Uh, need to be killed. And so our participatory science, our small group of volunteers, enabled us to really have big influence in policy to prevent the potential invasion of a new species in the state. And I don't usually lead with this, but. It turns out 11 people formally signed up for my project, and seven were regular contributors. So it's not necessarily about the volume of volunteers, right? It's about the quality of work and the quality of the question being asked and how we can really influence the research and the policy around these things.

Angie Amborn: 11:41

Um, so I will add when I, uh. One project that I initially worked on when I was a brand new entomologist, when I first came to the MDA was, um, when spotted wing drosophila came on the scene. Um, we had no idea really, like how widespread it was in the state. And so sometimes trapping in a very large distance for invasive species is difficult. If you don't have the staff or you don't have the money, you don't have, you know, you don't have the time. So we. Um, enlisted volunteers and we would, we sent them out trapping. Uh, you know, equipment and on all of these berry farms across the state, you know, from the farthest north all the way to the farthest south that we could find, um, collaborators. And then I worked with these, uh, volunteers and this was, you know, before we even had some of the apps that we have now. Um, so I was doing like communication with all of these collaborators on a weekly basis. Um, did you find anything? You're sending me pictures. Can we identify them? Teaching them how to identify the insects that were in these traps. Um, and we were able to. I think that first summer we were able to add basically every county that we were a, that we had a volunteer in, we were able to find spotted wing oph. So in one season we were able to say that this insect is way more widespread than these first early detections. So that's another example of how using volunteers can, you know, really help you understand the distribution even of, of an invasive species.

Jennifer Burington: 13:15

So, Angie, why don't you give us a couple other outcomes that we've seen from early detection in Minnesota.

Angie Amborn: 13:22

Um, so we, as, as some people know, um, or maybe not know, we have a, um, a line and a website called Report A Pest here at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. And it's a place where people can report. Uh, invasive species, um, or actually anything that they find or think is, you know, not quote normal, um, in their environment. Um, and as, as Angie mentioned, in 2020 when everything kind of shut down and, um, people were spending more time in their yards, they were at home, they were just generally outside, I think. More than normal. Um, we really kind of saw a ramp up that year in particular of, of new fines in the state. And so we've had a lot of first fines, um, of invasive species that have been reported by, um, you know, by participatory science, by our, our general, you know, by the. You know, the residents of Minnesota. Um, and so for example, uh, there, there's the list. It keeps getting longer and longer, but, um, we've had, uh, viburnum leaf beetle, lily leaf beetle, um, oh my gosh, there's been emerald dashboard, new counties, uh, spongy moth and new counties. Um, I know I'm missing a couple

Jennifer Burington: 14:39

elm zig zag sawfly. Yep. The

Angie Amborn: 14:41

elm Zig, zag sawfly was just the newest one this past year.

Jennifer Burington: 14:44

Elm seed bug.

Angie Amborn: 14:45

Yeah. There's been many that have come in that are first finds in the state that have not come from a necessarily, you know, a professional in, in that field or an agency is just actually come from people just paying a little bit more attention. And I think the whole of participatory science has really, you know, kind of helped drive that home to, to a lot of people.

Angela Gupta: 15:12

Yeah, and I think this is where the curiosity of the community is key. So when you're curious about something and you choose to look at it more closely, you choose to take a picture of it. You choose to put it into, iNaturalist, just for your own learning, so you can learn what that beautiful flower is, or that interesting insect is. It can be critical information for a scientist. If it's new to an area, it could become, you know, it could be a concern of his base. As an invasive species, even if it, it's considered native to Minnesota, it might be a species on the move because of climate. And so those distribution information can be incredibly valuable. And so even if no one's asking that question today, they might ask it in a couple of years. And that data is. Is publicly available, it's there. We can find it. We can look for it, we can use it. And we are seeing that happen more and more and more. These tools have become very easy and robust and they can be a lot of fun, a really great way to engage in the environment. So I totally agree with Angie, just seeing so many more reports and I love that curiosity in our community and I hope people continue to be curious and

Angie Amborn: 16:08

as a, as one of those research managers, I regularly go to those. Those places like iNaturalist and I'm like, alright, what, what's been reported in Minnesota in the last, and I'll just scroll through the list and then I'll be like, oh, what that is that, and then I'll, you know, look at a report and then if that is something I've not seen before or I think hasn't been found in Minnesota, I'll get ahold of, you know, that person through the app. And then oftentimes that will lead to, yeah, a first find.

Angela Gupta: 16:38

And when I plan participatory science projects, specifically looking for a certain species, I use that information from that app to understand when it is most visible to the public. So you might not recognize you're putting in theological data, but when you notice it, that's usually because there's something noticeable about it that's catching your eye. And so I will directly tie my public outreach, my social media posts, my blogs, all of that stuff to. The pH phenology that I can look up in iNaturalist. And so it just is this amazing tool and I don't think people are necessarily intending to track the phonology. Right? But it captured your eye at this, this time. And that's usually because there's a flower or a seed or very conspicuous growth form or, or something's happening, right? And so can be really helpful as we try to get people to specifically look for various species.

Angie Amborn: 17:26

Some. And to piggyback on that, some insects in particular have really strange behaviors. So we have a insect that came in through, um, through participatory science. It was the European chafer beetle, and that is one that has a strange. Uh, behavior. Um, so like right now people are reporting all of these June, may and June beetles, right? And they're reporting them as European chafer beetles. And I know that they're probably not European Chafer Beetles 'cause it's too early. And I, you know, you can ask or, so have you seen these insects swarming? So European chafer does this really weird thing 'cause the adults don't feed and they, they fly up into the trees and they swarm and it's typically on hot. You know, summer nights. And so if you look an iNaturalist, you can kind of see that those reports all kind of pick up towards the end of June and in July when those insects are doing that, that behavior, now someone's gonna catch me on this because there are some May and June beetles that will swarm up into trees to do a little bit bit of feeding, but it's not the same kind of that hot summer night where they're all swarming. So that phenology is is super helpful.

Jennifer Burington: 18:34

Yeah, I was just gonna mention that, that there's always some very fun pictures and videos that people send in and that we are trying to identify what species are in, in that picture and video and stuff. So please by all means send in to report a pest, um, any pictures that you see or any concerns that you have. Our website is www dot mda dot state mn. Us slash report a pest. It's all one word there. Or you can give us a call at(888) 545-6684 and leave a message and Angie will probably get back to you if it's an insect one. If not, it's probably gonna be Emily with our plants. So talking about other projects and other things that are going on right now, are there any current projects that people can sign up for? Um, and how and where do they find those?

Angela Gupta: 19:26

Yeah, for sure. We have, we're rolling out it, the projects are kind of set at this point, but Phenological, we will be rolling out information about the species. So University of Minnesota extension has a, all of our projects for the summer will be at z dot UMN dot edu back slash par. PARSCI. CI Tips, TIPS. So that's z.umn.edu. backlsash parsci tips. And what you'll find there are sort of two buckets of things, invasive species, early detection things, and so we've. Our spring, ephemerals are finished now, and so we'll be moving on to stilt grass, which is a non-native grass that we're very worried about in the state and chronologically that will be most obvious in August and September, so that's when we really push people to look for that. Jumping worms. We're doing another participatory science project. Looking at jumping worms are impact on forest soils, and so we are ramping up and we would love volunteers who are willing to do a fairly heavy lift of volunteering this summer. With looking at soil pins for multiple times a during the summer. So if you're interested in that, again, go to that website and then you will hear from us about feral swine or wild hogs. And the take home messages there is please do not shoot them and very quickly report them. So, um, that's the message, but we'll, we'll really get that ramped up before hunting season when the, the trail cams are out. And then the other type of project that we are rolling out constantly is something called climate ready woods Participatory science. And this is an invasive species. So I wanna be really clear. These are tree species that are likely to do well in Minnesota's future climate, but we don't know a lot about them. And so there are two big concerns that we heard from our community. One is that they might not be able to survive here. Totally fair. We don't know. We don't know how much they've been planted, so we really need to learn about them. And the other one is, what if they'll become invasive? Also, totally fair. I definitely do not wanna be introducing invasive species. So we have two different projects that are looking at that. The one is called Tree tracker and it's using iNaturalist to look for these new to area species. And so there's a whole bunch of species. We'll roll them out, phenological, and then we'll try to identify certain areas of the state, because if you're in the Red River Valley, their species are different than you're in Rochester, for example. But I love this one example that I'm gonna share. So there was one report of Eastern black walnut. So beloved native, great wildlife tree in Southern Minnesota, high value timber tree, but it's considered migration potential on the north shore. So up in the arrowhead of Minnesota. And last year we ran this project and we got two reports of Eastern black walnut in iNaturalist, um, in the Arrowhead one, up in the Chippewa National Forest or near there. And it was a single photo of a single walnut, just the nut, not the tree. And it was in iNaturalist. So we had a location, we had a time, and we had the picture. It was super easy to identify the actual nut. That's no question at all. But what makes it super interesting is that means that somewhere nearby there's a walnut. That's been able to grow there long enough to get to a large enough size to produce a nut, and then the nut itself was eaten, which also means that a local critter is using that nut, which is a part of our rewilding idea, and it also means it's unlikely to become invasive because it's getting lows used by local wildlife. So one image of one walnut tells us a whole lot about what we can kind of expect. At least starts to give us data about what we might be able to expect from that tree. So that's just one great example. I really love the other part of that project, so that's Tree Tracker and iNaturalist. We also have something called Tree Steward Journal, inspired by that jumping worms work where we're asking people with those species in their landscapes, any of those migration potential species to journal about what they're seeing. And so. Are you seeing things use them? Are you having to protect them from obry, from deer, from rabbits? Do, are you noticing signs of spread? Are you noticing signs of invasiveness? Like what, what's happening in the landscape to try to get a lot richer data? So those are the two, those are the kind of three big things. Uh, part participatory science tips for invasive species, and then looking at this climate ready woods to try to understand what's going on with these nude area trees.

Jennifer Burington: 23:44

Thanks Angela. So that's a lot of fun projects that people can get involved in. Um, if there, are there other more informal ways people can get involved? We talked a little bit about reporter pests, but if Angie, if you wanna cover a couple other ones as well.

Angie Amborn: 23:58

Yeah, so I mean, we've mentioned a few of those in this podcast so far. So the reporter passed. Either, you know, on filling out the online form or calling in. Um, iNaturalist is a great app if you haven't used that. Um, and then there's EDMaps, which um, is another one where we is specifically for invasive species and we use that one pretty heavily in. In Minnesota, iNaturalist is more like widespread, you know, throughout, throughout the world. Um, and Ed Maps is used in a lot of different places as well. But as an agency and our, in our department anyway, um, we like to use EDMaps for, um, for the insect and the nice thing for insects and, and diseases. And the nice thing about these apps is that, you know, you don't necessarily have to devote a full summer to, you know. Following one pile of dirt or going back to certain places, um, you can just have it on your phone, which most people always have with them. And then you can, if you see something, you can, uh, you know, take a picture, open the app and report it right there. Um, and so that requires. Uh, you know, a little bit less commitment from people, but still allows you to like, to experience that curiosity and explore that curiosity while you're doing, you know, while you're walking around the local lake with your kids on their bike or while you're walking the dog, or any of the things that you're doing out in the natural world, you probably have your phone with you. So those are some really great ways to do that.

Angela Gupta: 25:33

Yeah, and I'll just add, that was great, Angie. Thanks. So for iNaturalist, as Angie said, it can be anywhere in the world and it can be anything that's ever lived. So it's not confined to just plants or insects. It can also do things like pine cones and scat and tracks and just lots and lots of things. And it uses. Two levels of authentication. The first is using your photograph and it will use artificial intelligence to give you a best guess. And it has gotten quite smart. I mean, it's a really massive database. And then the second level is a human. So a human will actually look at it and confirm whether that's the right thing or there can even be like robust conversations about identification. Uh, and then if it's, if it's all good enough, it'll get to be research grade if it's not considered cultivated. So super great tool. And then. For Ed Maps, I always recommend if you think you found something new on iNaturalist and it isn't it native and you're worried that you know it says it's invasive, then go ahead and report it to Ed Maps. And that's a second level. Like you, you might find it in iNaturalist, but you would report it in Ed Maps in Minnesota. And we use EDMaps in Minnesota for all things invasive. So it's, it's insects, it's plants, it's zebra muscles, it's. You know, invasive carp, it's all the things. And so I think we're one of the few states that's so comprehensive in our ed maps usage, but it makes it way easier for, for community members.

Angie Amborn: 26:49

And one, one of I will. Add to that is that one of the nice things about ED maps is that when you put it in, those of us that are in the resource management world, um, we get an email. So if you are gonna report an insect that you think might be a, um, a new find or an invasive, it's gonna ask you all the information, you're gonna put it in, and then I'm gonna get an email. And so I'm gonna see it right away. Um, sometimes. With iNaturalist and we, you know, we'll have an example of this in a minute. Um, there is a lag time between when something pops up in iNaturalist and if those of us in the resource management world ever see it.

Angela Gupta: 27:31

And then I just wanna add one more thing. So we use the, the photo for almost all of the verification. So good photo quality matters, and you can put multiple photos into all of these apps. So please take a, a clear info picture of the whole thing, the whole species, whether that is an insect or a tree. And then the. Putting in multiple pictures, so different angles closer to the front, closer to the back. The whole branch, the whole leaf where the leaf connects with the twigs can be really critical and important. And if there's anything really noteworthy like seeds or flowers or. Anything like that. If you, you can have multiple pictures. So the more you give us and the better quality, the much easier it makes it for our identification.

Angie Amborn: 28:15

I would also add, if you have a penny or a pen or a paperclip or something else in your pocket, add something in there for scale, right? Because there's a lot of different flowers or seeds that look similar, but one may be four times bigger than the other one. And so if you have something in there for scale that can really give. Those of us that are doing identification, a lot more information,

Angela Gupta: 28:38

I'll sometimes put my work gloves or my finger or ask someone else to put their finger in it. Right. I mean, a, a penny is perfect 'cause we know exactly what size that is, but a finger gets you close.

Jennifer Burington: 28:48

Yep. Well, thanks. So how have these informal ways that you've kind of discussed of public involvement influenced your work?

Angie Amborn: 29:00

Um, so I guess I can talk to that a little bit. So, I mean, previously I had not really used iNaturalist that much because we've been so heavily, you know, entrenched in, in ed maps. Um, but in the last year, um, we got a, the first report of Elm Zig, Zag Sawfly. And Elms sawfly, for those of you who don't know, is a, is a sawfly, which is a, like, it's a wasp in the same family as bees and wasp, but it's kind of a little more stout. It doesn't have a little waist like a lot of our other, um, you know, other insects in that group. Um, and this insect particularly feeds. Only on species of elm, and it's very distinctive because it makes, literally makes a zigzag in the leaf as the the larvae are feeding. Um, and so what happened was is that someone reported. Um, Elm zigzag sawfly to iNaturalist. And then what happened from there is that a graduate student working on Elm zigzag sawfly on the East coast saw this iNaturalist report because they were looking, well, where else has this been reported? Where else is it? I mean, and to be honest, it was on my radar, but not. It wasn't up there on my radar. You know, I had heard of it, heard of it, and I didn't. I knew it was out on the East coast, but I, you know, figured it might be a while before it was, um, reported in Minnesota. And so, lo and behold, I get an email from a, um, a grad student, both myself and one of our DNR, um, forest Health Specialist, got these emails and, uh, we were like, what? No. Uh, but yeah, it sure looks like it. And so we went out to the site where it was reported and sure enough, um. It was the first find of elm zig zigs sawfly in the state. And then from there, um, we got a little bit of, um, you know, good press with, um, some interviews with the actual, um, you know, the heads of iNaturalist. Um, we did a little YouTube interview. I. And then from there, what happened was people started reporting elm zigzag sawfly, basically everywhere. So now we are getting, uh, multiple reports from around the state, um, on a regular basis. And so Elm zigzag sawfly is probably one of those insects that was here longer than, than, you know. Be longer than we suspected it's been here. Um, and it is probably gonna be found a lot more widespread than, you know, than we would have thought. Um, you know, it is a sawfly so it can fly and it's pretty, you know, it's a pretty decent flyer. Um, so it can spread on its own. Um, but this is one of those instances where, you know, just the, the community science, um, and participatory science led to. Um, you know, researchers kind of talking together, um, finding this information and then, you know, getting the word out. And now we, we are a lot more knowledgeable about this insect as to where it is. But then also what it has done is led me to get involved with some of the researchers out east and now we are collecting data to send to them specifically on phonology. And we're also using some of these participatory science reports to send information to them so that they can build phonology models.

Jennifer Burington: 32:14

So Elm ZigZag Sawfly, like you said, is, um, a new project and it's expanded on that. Um, so what other really unique participatory science projects, um, are out there that are either taking place right now or are in the future?

Angela Gupta: 32:29

Yeah, I'll jump in on that one. So I, there's a project that we're, we're, we're experimenting with a dog using to sniff out European highbush cranberry. And so this is kind of fun. I've never had a volunteer who wasn't human before. So the, the backstory on this is there's a research at the University of Minnesota looking at highbush cranberries. We have a Native American highbush cranberry, and we have a non-native European. Highbush cranberry, and now there's genetic data about these two species. We know that they hybridize and they did a participatory science project using humans a couple of years ago to collect these leaf samples and to send them in and to try to identify what they thought they had found. And so I was a participant in that. And when I'm out there hiking, I was looking for highbush cranberries, and I would. Write it down. I would take all the pictures and I collected the leaves and I sent them in, and it turns out that myself and pretty much everybody, but the state botanist cannot. Distinguish these two plants apart, morphologically just based on their leaf structure and their plant structure. And so it makes it really hard to know as a research manager if you have American highbush cranberry, a lovely native with edible fruit or a non-native, potentially invasive European highbush cranberry that doesn't have edible fruit because. We can't really tell them apart. And so they were trying to figure out how to solve this problem. They have a genetic test, but that's expensive and you have to send it off and it's not really ideal. And then separately, all together a volunteer reached out to me and she has been training a lot of scent work with her con with her dog, a lot of cumin cadaver type work. And I think she was ready to not look for dead bones. And so she was trying to find something a little more upbeat and wanting to get into conservation dog training. There isn't much of a community here in Minnesota and so I actually didn't put these two projects together until the research were like, man, I wish we had a dog. And I was like, wait, I have a dog. And so I connected the, the trainer and the dog with the research partner and indeed they are right now training to see if this German Shorthaired pointer can indeed reliably. Flying Amer a European highbush cranberry in the landscape. And so I know he's been out this spring. He trained over the winter and he's been out this spring and he has successfully found some, but they're trying to really, um, get him more reliable across the landscape where there are many, many, many scents to distract your average dog. And so it's pretty fun and exciting. I know there's a different project that's maybe in the works trying to distinguish the, the sweet spot for. Robo dogs versus actual dogs. So this is an area I think of a lot of interest and it would be really great to deploy like different species and different tools in the right way so that they make the most sense for natural resource managers. So that's still early days for the conservation dog, but it's super fun.

Angie Amborn: 35:15

Um, I guess I would add, and I don't know a ton about this project, but people probably know like one of the more famous participatory science project is with Monarch Watch. Um, and I think that would be a great episode for, for a future podcast if we had someone from the university. University of Minnesota, come on and talk about, um, some of the Monarch, uh, projects that are going on. But there's obviously the, the project that a lot of people know about where they're tagging monarchs and they're following them through their life cycles and, and through their migrations. And that's probably one of the more famous ones, um, that a lot of people might know about.

Jennifer Burington: 35:51

Yeah. And including like, I'm just thinking of like bird banding too. Yep. I mean, that is very historic. I mean, some of these birds have been banned for. Years and years and years. Um, so that's another, a way for people to be able to take pictures. You can see the numbers on the bands and stuff, but that's specifically with an animal. And then we're talking more plants and insects and things like that. But yeah, there's always, there's always some project to get involved in, um, that you can help get, gather data and help researchers with their projects. So to kind of continue with that, what do you think is the future of participatory science? We've talked about kind of things that we have done, but what do you think is the future of this?

Angie Amborn: 36:32

So I think with participatory science is, is probably going to only continue to grow. Um, like we were talking earlier, Angie, you know, it's the, the more and more people are starting to get involved and I think it's going to become more important. Aspect of resource manager's toolbox because I mean, there we are facing funding cuts on across the levels of, you know, all of our different projects. Um, and so as we, you know, start to have to kind of pull back and try to really focus our efforts. Within, you know, the money that we have. Um, try really reaching out to the public and kind of tapping into that curiosity that we talked about and really utilizing the expertise that's out there. Um, 'cause there are a lot of people that have training that, you know, you might have people that took entomology classes or took a bunch of botany classes, or maybe even at one point in time were. A botanist, but now we're doing something else. And so there's a lot of people out there with lots of different levels of training. Um, and so why not tap into that if we can, to help us complete, you know, our mission of, you know, plant protection.

Angela Gupta: 37:54

Yeah. I wanna add onto that. I agree. I think participatory science is really coming into a heyday, and so it's become much more acceptable in the scientific community to use community science and community data. I also think, and this actually came out of that jumping worm project I talked about in the beginning that eco anxiety is super real. And so people are anxious about invasive species or about climate change or severe weather or all kinds of things. And it turns out, I think most people that come to me with questions are come because they're anxious about our environment in some way, shape or form or another, there is a place for you to make positive change and participatory science is one of them. And so if, if. You have some level of equal anxiety or you're just anxious and wanting to be engaged in the world. This is a place in which you can do that and make a meaningful difference in the science and in the policy and in the future of our great state.

Jennifer Burington: 38:49

Well, thank you Angie and Angela for all the information. It was great having you on to talk about the participatory science and the ways the public involvement is influencing all of our work. Um, you have given us some great ways we can get involved to better our environment. This has been Smarty Plants, a podcast from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. Our producer is Brittany Raveill. Our editor is Larry Schumacher, and I have been your host. You can learn more about pests and other invasive species that affect our environment@www.md a dot state dot MN dot US. And while you head to our website, we'll be working on the next episode of Smarty Plants. See you there.