Calling all citizen scientists: Help map echidnas for University of Adelaide researchers

If you have sharp eyes, quick fingers, like snapping photos and bagging poo in the name of science — there could be a job for you at Adelaide Uni.

Thousands of sharp eyes and quick fingers are on the case for “Echidna CSI”, snapping photos and bagging poo in the name of science.

But more are needed.

The Conservation Science Initiative — hence CSI — is one of three citizen science projects recruiting helpers at the University of Adelaide this Saturday afternoon.

PhD student Tahlia Perry says Echidna CSI is “off to a great start” with more than 3000 people registered across Australia and 1718 submissions received to date, mainly from “more populated areas”.

“Echidnas are literally everywhere, it’s incredible ... this is the kind of data we need,” she said.

If you love echidnas, go to Adelaide Uni on Saturday afternoon.

“We want to know if they’re living in highly populated areas and if that is affecting their health and their survival, if they care about being near people or if they don’t.”

Ms Perry said volunteers used the free Echidna CSI app to record sightings of animals or poo including the location, photo or video footage.

“We don’t have that data for the whole of Australia, even though people assume echidnas are everywhere, we don’t have an actual distribution map of where they actually are,” she said.

“And they’re such a hard species to actually study out in the wild.

“You can have an area where you know someone has seen an echidna a couple of times, you can be looking and watching that area for months, potentially years at a time and you’ll never see another echidna again.”

Echidnas tend to show up when least expected, so it’s ideal to have as many people as possible on the lookout. The same goes for echidna poo that contains echidna DNA and hormones from the cells lining the intestine, as well as DNA from food they eat.

“To have people keeping an eye out for that and sending it to us from all different places in Australia is an incredibly powerful approach. It means we can do a whole countrywide study we’d never been able to do before, because of citizen science, ” Ms Perry said.

“The more data we get the more powerful conclusions we can make from it”.

The FungiMap project will discover and protect Australia’s native fungi through recordings of target species, while MEGA Murray Darling Microbat uses bat detectors to record ultrasonic echolocation calls. Citizen Science Day begins with a free barbecue on Saturday on the Barr Smith Lawns at 1pm.

Book tickets.