Insects and bioblitzes: A case study at Alabama Forever Wild's Big Canoe Creek

To address the ongoing extinction crisis and maintain biodiversity services, ecologists must identify drivers of population and distributional changes. To accomplish this, biodiversity data is crucial. However, major gaps in biodiversity data persist and existing data sets tend to be taxonomically and temporally biased. Insects are often underrepresented in biodiversity datasets. A popular method for generating biodiversity data is a bioblitz, where biodiversity data is gathered by volunteers. Bioblitzes are typically unstructured and taxonomically biased; insects are often overlooked. The goals of this study were: 1. implement a new bioblitz framework to generate better insect data, 2. use site-occupancy models to analyze the data, 3. compare the resulting dataset to an insect dataset generated from a traditional bioblitz. We developed a modification of a traditional bioblitz, termed a Recurring Expert Bioblitz (R.E.B.); effectively a temporally replicated bioblitz. We participated in a traditional bioblitz and then conducted an R.E.B. at the same property that consisted of four, two-day surveys. R.E.B. surveys were spatially and temporally replicated to facilitate analysis in occupancy models. During the R.E.B. insects were collected via sweep-net and aspirator at seven sampling plots. The traditional bioblitz insect dataset was dominated by two insect orders, while the R.E.B. dataset was not. Further, our statistical models indicate habitat associations for detected taxa and estimates their distribution across the property. The R.E.B allowed for detection of taxa that would not have been available for detection during the traditional bioblitz. These results suggest R.E.B.s can reduce bias in future bioblitz surveys.