Farmer-led agroecology for biodiversity with climate change.

The increasing pace of climate change is an existential threat to farming continuity and biodiversity. Agricultural innovation is running too slowly but could be accelerated by a change in the agroecological narrative. A farmer-led agroecology prioritising farming continuity for biodiversity would speed up innovation and better serve science and society.

Decision-making of citizen scientists when recording species observations.

Citizen scientists play an increasingly important role in biodiversity monitoring. Most of the data, however, are unstructured-collected by diverse methods that are not documented with the data. Insufficient understanding of the data collection processes presents a major barrier to the use of citizen science data in biodiversity research. We developed a questionnaire to ask citizen scientists about their decision-making before, during and after collecting and reporting species observations, using Germany as a case study. We quantified the greatest sources of variability among respondents and assessed whether motivations and experience related to any aspect of data collection. Our questionnaire was answered by almost 900 people, with varying taxonomic foci and expertise. Respondents were most often motivated by improving species knowledge and supporting conservation, but there were no linkages between motivations and data collection methods. By contrast, variables related to experience and knowledge, such as membership of a natural history society, were linked with a greater propensity to conduct planned searches, during which typically all species were reported. Our findings have implications for how citizen science data are analysed in statistical models; highlight the importance of natural history societies and provide pointers to where citizen science projects might be further developed.