Bat detective

PROJECT

Url:http://www.batdetective.org/
Start date: 2012/10/04
End date: Still open
Infrastructure: Zooniverse

TEAM

Official team page:http://www.batdetective.org/#!/about/team/science
Leader: Kate Jones
Institution: University College London
Partner institutions: Zoological Society of London, The Bat Conservation Trust, BatLife Europe, University of Auckland, the Citizen Science Alliance.
Contact: https://twitter.com/batdetect
Main location: University College London

PROJECT DEFINITION

---

Subject

Natural sciences > zoology (nature/conservation)

Description

Bat Detective is an Zooniverse citizen science project which asks the public to turn detective to find bat calls in audio recordings across the world.

Purpose.

Mapping out bat ‘hotspots’ by using recordings and classifying the sounds they make for echolocation and social purposes.

Research question.

Calls that bats use for socialising are not used for echolocation but communication, and these calls tend to be lower in frequency and have a more complex structure. Only under a third of all the echolocation calls of bats worldwide are known and even less is understood about social calls. Perhaps only 5% of all species social calls have been recorded.

ABOUT PARTICIPANT TASKS

---

Tasks description.

Participants are required to differentiate between a bat and a non-bat call, the different types of calls and what sequence a call belongs in.

Interaction with system objects.

The user will categorise bat calls by listening to, and looking at visualisations of, bat call recordings.

Grey typology	Participation typology	Contribution type:
Computing: NO Thinking: YES Sensing: NO Gaming: NO	Crowdsourcing ☑ Distributed intelligence ☐ Participatory science ☐ Extreme citizen science ☐ Science outreach ☐	Data collection ☐ Data analysis ☐ Data interpretation ☑--------
Gaming
Genre:	Gaming elements:
Interface
Data type to manipulate: sound	interface enjoyment: cool/attractive Interface usability: rather easy to use	Member profiles::N/A Member profile elements:

ABOUT GUIDANCE AND FEEDBACK

---

Guidance	Feedback on
Tutorial and documentation: YES Training sequence: SOMEWHAT Peer to peer guidance: SOMEWHAT	individual performance: Somewhat collective performance: Somewhat research progress: Somewhat

.

COMMUNITY

---

Tools	News & Events
Communication: website, blog, other Social Network: Twitter, Facebook, other	Main news site: http://blog.batdetective.org/ Frequency of project news updates: less than weekly Type of events: other Frequency of events : 5
Community description
Community size (volounteers based): 671 Role: Interaction form:Reddit, twitter and http://talk.batdetective.org/ Has official community manager(s): N/A Has team work N/A

Other information about community: Blog contains most of the news/community updates. There was a google hangout with the bat detective team on 20/12/2013. Although there is some community participation in the comments, the blog is rather quiet(the last post was made on 7/2/2013). The twitter feed (@batdetect) is more active, as is the facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/batdetective). The team also held a popular reddit AMA (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1pvge6/we_are_the_zooniverse_the_worlds_most_awesome_and/)
Community led additions:

OTHER PROJECT INFORMATION

---

batdetective.jpg Yes [[has completion level::High]

http://www.batdetective.org/#!/about/team/science Bat detect team on twitter University College London https://twitter.com/batdetect

Yes zoology Natural sciences nature/conservation Mapping out bat ‘hotspots’ by using recordings and classifying the sounds they make for echolocation and social purposes. Calls that bats use for socialising are not used for echolocation but communication, and these calls tend to be lower in frequency and have a more complex structure. Only under a third of all the echolocation calls of bats worldwide are known and even less is understood about social calls. Perhaps only 5% of all species social calls have been recorded.

Bat detective Participants are required to differentiate between a bat and a non-bat call, the different types of calls and what sequence a call belongs in. data interpretation

crowdsourcing sound, other: Thinking: yes Computing: no Sensing: no Gaming: no

The user will categorise bat calls by listening to, and looking at visualisations of, bat call recordings. cool/attractive rather easy to use yes N/A weak N/A N/A N/A

N/A

N/A website, blog, other Twitter, Facebook, other other 5 http://blog.batdetective.org/ 671 less than weekly Blog contains most of the news/community updates. There was a google hangout with the bat detective team on 20/12/2013. Although there is some community participation in the comments, the blog is rather quiet(the last post was made on 7/2/2013). The twitter feed (@batdetect) is more active, as is the facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/batdetective). The team also held a popular reddit AMA (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1pvge6/we_are_the_zooniverse_the_worlds_most_awesome_and/)

Reddit, twitter and http://talk.batdetective.org/ N/A Reddit AMA, various science blogs and an appearance on BBC news

High

The signup/login process is not working as of 9/12/2013 on firefox, chrome or safari. The project does not look particularly active at the moment.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

. Bat detective team

https://twitter.com/batdetect

Bat Detective. Unknown

http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/project.cfm?id=zooniverse-bat-detective

Part of the Citizen Science section of the Scientific American Website

Website calls on people to become 'bat detectives'. Mark Kinver

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19803167

Become a Bat Detective. Lily Bui

http://scistarter.com/blog/2012/10/become-a-bat-detective/