Monitoring Insects and Public Involvement: the challenge of the life project MIPP

The recent springing up of citizen science projects has increased the citizen interactions with nature. Currently, the insects and their key role in ecosystems are unknown to the public, being neglected respect to other animal taxa. The Life “MIPP – Monitoring Insects with Public Participation” (LIFE11 NAT/IT/000252) is the first Italian project that involves the public on survey of rare and endangered insects. MIPP focuses on ecological tasks, development of standard monitoring protocols for Habitats Directive species, and on “citizen science”, involvement the public as surveyors. The dissemination of the project is based on a network of events at local and national scale, integrating the technical actions, with public seminar and workshops, school didactics, social web, press and media releases, and comic strips. Currently, the dissemination network reached about 5000 citizens, through 200 events; 250 citizen scientists participated with 630 contributions. Moreover, 30 field assistants joined the monitoring actions in the study areas. The records from citizens have been used to improve the knowledge at larger spatial and temporal scales about the occurrence and distribution of target insects, implementing a national database. The citizen data will be analyzed to clarify the specific scientific questions, this is the next step.