This was a cross-sectional study, comparing data collected from experts with data collected from volunteers. I used two monitoring techniques in this thesis (Table 1).
Table 1. Method for data collection, what aim(s) they correspond to, type of volunteers, and at what scale.
| Monitoring technique | Aim(s) | Participants and experts | Level of monitoring |
| Transects (1) | Are some orders easier to identify? Is it possible for citizens to monitor pollinators? | Adults (n=10) Expert (n=1) | Large-scale |
| Video recordings (2) | Are some orders easier to identify? Is it possible for citizens to monitor pollinators? Is it possible to monitor pollinators via video recordings? | Students =15) Children (n=35) Expert (n=1) | Small-scale |
Study sites
The location of the transect (1) was a semi-natural grassland in Björnarp, Östergötland (Figure 1). Semi-natural grasslands are ecosystems with high plant species richness, high nutrient content, and large nectar resources which is attractive for multiple pollinators (Bomanowska et al., 2019). The semi-natural grassland in this thesis had different types of areas, for example there was one area with a higher nutrient content and another area with a rocky base. There were a wide range of different plants, all preferred by pollinators. The transect was laid to cover as many as these different areas and plants in order to maximize the number of pollinators.
Video material for the video recordings (2) was recorded in Stavsätter, Östergötland and Tinnerö Eklandskap, Östergötland (Figure 1). Areas with field scabious (Knautia arvensis), oregano (Origanum vulgare), yarrow (Achillea millefolium), and creeping thistle (Cirsium arvensis) were chosen since they are important nectar resources for pollinators (Lack, 1982; Theis, 2006; Ghazoul, 2006; Colteaux et al., 2003).
Focal species
The target insects were syrphid flies (Diptera), bumblebees (Bombus), solitary bees (Apoidea), and butterflies (Lepidoptera) since these are the necessary insect orders to monitor in order to be included in the EU-PoMS. The mentioned target insects do also serve great ecological importance.
Transect (n=10)
The transect walk in this thesis was conducted during lunch-time 2021-07-02 when the weather was sunny and wind still. Ten volunteers performed three 150 meters transect walk with a pace of 50 m/min and looked for insects within a 4 meters hemispehere.
Digital F.I.T-count
I recorded a video of 50×50 cm patches of four different flower species and cut them into three videos. 50 volunteers preformed a digital F.I.T-count, that is observing 3 videos, each 10 minutes, of flowers being visited by pollinators.
Statistical analysis
All analyses were made in R-studio (R Core Team, 2021). I used stringr- and stringdist-package in R (van der Loo, 2014) to get the degree of agreement between the experts’ string (sequence of observations e.g., HHF) and the volunteers strings (sequence of observations e.g., HBB).