Chapter 3 Backyard bioblitz

A bioblitz is a biodiversity survey that is done rapidly for a specific place. National Geographic provides an excellent ‘getting started’ guide to the process.

Learning outcomes

  1. Identify common species of animals locally.
  2. Collect a dataset.
  3. Connect principles of experimental design to implementation.
  4. Write clear and reusable meta-data.
  5. Contribute to open science by publishing data and meta-data.

Steps

  1. Scout out a location that has a few species of animals. Vertebrate or invertebrate taxa - preferably both. A medium-size backyard, park, woodlot, or grassland is ideal.
  2. Do a bioblitz or intensive process of surveying a specific place for a short duration of time to estimate all the living species (excepting plants) locally.
  3. For the purposes of this experiment, focus on on all animals you can spot.
  4. Select a set of locations within the designated area to sample. This can include direct observation of species spots, a region, walking through a region repeatedly. Select the scale carefully that matches what you can observe. This can be relatively unstructured sampling process with the goal of documenting as many species as possible that reside in this place.
  5. Record your data to your datasheet and also consider using the iNaturalist free app to record and share your observations globally.

Data

Here is a sample datasheet for the pilot experiment. This is set up as species-level observations, i.e. each row is replicate species you observe. This datasheet is not structured for frequency or density - simply a comprehensive list of all animal species you can spot during the pilot experiment.

Meta-data

Describe how you collected the data. Ensure that each attribute in the dataset has a brief description. This is like an abbreviated version of the methods section in peer-reviewed science publications. Report total sampling time and any relevant details that enable someone else to reuse these data or repeat the process of doing a bioblitz that collecting similar data in a different place.

Deeper dive

If you choose this adventure, your goal is to experiment with the method of measuring biodiversity locally. Innovate on the pilot experiment, simple biodiversity inventory methodology to test a hypothesis and predictions. The predictions should be logical and reasonable outcomes if the hypothesis is a good approximation of how the system works, i.e. the key variables that make it work. Predictions should be testable and read like simple sentences that describe results. The goal of the deeper-dive experiment is to take your pilot experiment, examine what worked and did not work so well in your experiment, and do a deeper and more thorough job of testing a key idea that you are interested in associated with biodiversity patterns locally. The goal should be to explore one key factor that describes why biodiversity varies locally - at the scale you define.