By Moya Owens, Research Assistant with the ANTENNA Project at TCD
In recent years the decline in wild insect pollinators has increased dramatically, causing huge concern among the pollinator monitoring community. The 2023 EU Pollinators Initiative has set out a number of actions to be taken by the EU and the Member States to help reverse the decline in pollinators, with the first action defined as ‘establishing a comprehensive monitoring system. The current EU-wide Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (EU-PoMS) provides a methodology for transnational pollinator monitoring however many gaps still remain. Modern technologies (such as camera traps, sensors, robotics) can help to address these concerns, with the aim of overcoming key monitoring gaps by increasing taxonomic and geographic coverage, speed and accuracy.
The ANTENNA project (MAkiNg Technology work for moNitoring polliNAtors) is an EU wide project with an overarching goal of filling key monitoring gaps through advancing novel technologies which complement EU-wide pollinator monitoring schemes. The project will address the following objectives:
- Advance automated sample sorting and image recognition tools from individual prototypes to systems adoptable by practitioners, through a co-design approach;
- Expand pollinator monitoring to under-researched pollinator taxa, ecosystems, and pressures;
- Quantify the added value of a broad range of novel monitoring systems in comparison and combination with ‘traditional’ methods in terms of information gains related to economic costs;
- Provide a framework for integrative monitoring by combining multiple data streams and for developing routines for near real-time forecasting models as bases for early warning systems;
- Upscale from local demonstrations to the implementation of large-scale transnational pipelines and provide context-specific guidance for the choice and combination of monitoring methods and indicators for policy and end-users.
Field work
ANTENNA is organised into 5 work packages, including improving and testing new monitoring technologies, integrative modelling and large scale implementation. Here at Trinity, we are going to be testing novel technologies in the field alongside traditional methods of pollinator monitoring. This involves deploying two camera traps in the field: a DIOPSIS camera, developed by Faunabit and a MiniMon camera, developed by members of the ANTENNA team. These cameras use image recognition tools to record and identify insects. Alongside using this technology, we will conduct transects and pan trapping on a minimum of 5 sites in Co. Kildare, meaning a busy field season for us!
Next steps
Along with fieldwork, we are also involved in identifying the needs of stakeholders ie. members of the pollinator community (such as ecologists, entomologists, researchers). We have developed an online survey which aims to identify the limitations of current monitoring approaches, opportunities for improvement and desired outcomes (eg. Integration of technologies with EU monitoring schemes). This survey represents the first step of a co-design process, with the information gathered summariesed to inform other tasks in the project and to optimise large-scale implementation which is the ultimate aim of the project. Additionally we are going to produce a roadmap for enhanced European wide pollinator monitoring. The report will outline a pathway for implementing the novel technology at large EU scales, and will include information on the status of the new technologies, guidance of complementary use and a cost benefit analysis.
This work is supported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through the Biodiversa+ program. Irish ANTENNA work is led in Trinity College Dublin by Prof Jane Stout, in collaboration with Dr Jess Knapp (Lund University).
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