Biodiversity Information Science and Standards : Conference Abstract
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Conference Abstract
The Role of Natural History Collections in Public Engagement for Enhancing Biodiversity Research
expand article info Efrat Gavish-Regev ‡
‡ The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Corresponding author: Efrat Gavish-Regev (efrat.gavish-regev@mail.huji.ac.il)
Received: 30 Jun 2019 | Published: 04 Jul 2019
© 2019 Efrat Gavish-Regev
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Gavish-Regev E (2019) The Role of Natural History Collections in Public Engagement for Enhancing Biodiversity Research. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 3: e37782. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.3.37782
Open Access

Abstract

Citizen science biodiversity monitoring projects are becoming very common. It is generally accepted that these joint projects, of scientists and the public, have a positive effect on biodiversity and conservation education programs as well as on policy-makers opinion Ganzevoort et al. (2017). Yet, there is still a debate on the quality of the data collected in citizen science monitoring schemes, and especially on the benefits to high-quality research. Here, I present an example of how collection-based research and involvement of the public (non-taxonomists) in taxonomical education, i.e., advanced citizen science, can enhance research on scorpion diversity in Israel. Furthermore, the process of public involvement in monitoring and especially the prerequisites needed for this process, contributed to high-quality research, that in turn is enhancing biodiversity science. Considering this, I will discuss the basic stages required for successful public engagement in high-quality biodiversity research and monitoring schemes.

Keywords

citizen science, biodiversity, natural history collections, scorpions

Presenting author

Efrat Gavish-Regev

Presented at

Biodiversity_Next 2019

References

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