Citizen science round-up from 2014

During Springwatch this year, we shared a number of citizen science surveys and apps with you and the results are now in.

We helped to launch apps such as the Great British Bee count, which has seen some incredible numbers coming in over the summer. You also took part in the Big Butterfly Count in your thousands and our partners at Butterfly Trust have again been able to better determine which species are seeing an increase, and which are not.

We've shared some of the findings here...

iRecord butterfly app

The iRecord Butterflies app was launched by Butterfly Conservation in April this year and we gave it a mention on Springwatch Unsprung.

By the end of the series, they’d received over 7,000 sightings of 44 different species from just under 900 different people.

Now, they are just about to reach the 30,000 records mark!!

29,904 butterfly sightings of 61 species have been submitted through the app for 2014.

Just under 2,000 people have submitted at least one butterfly record through the app.

Clouded Yellows (migrant) have done well in October and Speckled Wood had an excellent September.

Over the year so far, they have received more records of Small Tortoiseshell through the app than any other butterfly.

Pretty amazing for a species that was becoming quite scarce in some areas over recent years (and which had declined by 78% in UK abundance between 1976-2013).

The Great British Bee Count

People around the UK downloaded a smartphone app to log their bee sightings, specially developed by Friends of the Earth, B&Q and Buglife.

The Great British Bee Count ran for 12 weeks from 10 June to 31 August 2014.

23,732 people spotted 832,110 bees in a total of 99,854 separate counts.

Friends of the Earth hopes to run The Great British Bee Count annually so that over time comparable data and trends can help to answer key questions about bee health.

Yellow and black bumblebees were the most-spotted species, seen by 85% of people.

The Great British Bee Count will be back in Spring 2015 with new features on the app to make it easier to identify a range of species. Watch this space!

The National Hedgehog survey

The People’s Trust for Endangered Species received 1,800 emails about the survey.

Following a sifting process (led single-handedly by PTES colleague Emily, who is still working with them after that mammoth task) 500 volunteers have been assigned sites to survey.

The team now has 500 survey sites that have volunteers lined up to do them so they have surpassed their target of 400 sites!

Ladybird survey

This year is the 10th anniversary of the first record of the harlequin ladybird and we encouraged you to take part in the online UK Ladybird Survey soon after its launch.

They now have 12,207 records through the app (of which 8812 records have photographs which is incredible).

Almost 10,000 (9776) of these records were submitted to iRecord since the Springwatch mention - including:

They are now also asking people to look out for a little fungus that has been found on harlequin ladybirds in London – for more information head to the website.

The Big Bumblebee Discovery

Approximately 30,000 people, mostly children, took part in EDF Energy's Big Bumblebee Discovery project.

This resulted in around 27,000 individual bumblebees being reported and more than 4,000 bumblebee data entries from across the UK.

Dr Helen Roy and Dr Michael Pocock from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) led the analysis of the nationwide citizen science experiment, which was carried out in partnership with the British Science Association. The experiment is the first year of the Great EDF Energy Experiment, a five year commitment to engaging 100,000 young people into science.

By sharing links and promoting these surveys via the Watches, we can help to return results to our partners that make a real difference to our understanding.

Thanks for taking part.