Citizen Science and Pollinators of South America

Tuesday, Apr 12, 2022| Tags: Citizen Science, Monitoring, Education, Book | Natalia P. Ghilardi-Lopes, Eduardo E. Zattara

“The book Citizen Science and Pollinators of South America provides us, through a clear, direct and accessible language, a useful and enjoyable reading. It is an original work that brings together for the first time, in a single volume, knowledge about pollinators and successful experiences of citizen science projects in South America. in South America, focusing on this biodiversity.” Blandina Felipe Viana, Universidade Federal da Bahia

The digital version of this book is freely available -

Spanish (PDF/epub) or Portuguese (PDF)

In this book we address some ecological aspects of pollinators, with emphasis on South America. In particular, Section I discusses the concept of ecosystem services (Chapter 1), ways to make urban environments more pollinator friendly (Chapter 2), and the presence of species that are not native to South American countries and the ecological problems they can cause (Chapter 3). Section II presents the main groups of pollinating organisms that exist in South America, and the characteristics that can be used to identify them (Chapters 4 to 9).

Team of biologists from Citizen Science Peru. Photo credit: Lino Chipana

We consider it more than desirable that all people become involved in the production of new scientific knowledge about these organisms, which can support environmental management and conservation actions. The process of public participation in science, based on collaboration between scientists and science stakeholders, is what we call citizen science.

There are different citizen science projects underway with groups of pollinating organisms in different countries in South America. In Section III, we describe how to become a citizen scientist (Chapter 10) and give you several examples of projects already underway with which you can collaborate (Chapters 11 to 18). As several parts of the book use terms that may be unfamiliar, we have highlighted them in the text (in orange and underlined) so that you can consult their definition and meaning in the Glossary at the end of the book.

This book has been produced with the support of the SURPASS2 - Safeguarding Pollinators and Pollination Services project (https://bee-surpass.org/), an international collaboration between Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the UK. It was made possible thanks to many minds, involving not only its 60 authors (52 academic scientists and 8 citizen scientists), but also all the scientists participating in the SURPASS2 project, and all the citizen scientists who contributed to the projects described in Section III. To all of them go our thanks!

Spanish (PDF/epub) or Portuguese (PDF)