Abstract
Harmonia axyridis (Coleoptera, Coccinellidae) is a globally invasive ladybird. It has been intentionally introduced in many countries as a biological control agent, whereas it has been unintentionally released in many others. Climatic factors are important in limiting the spread of H. axyridis. For example, very few records are known from tropical or desert regions. Currently, no published reports are known from Central America. Here, we report H. axyridis from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and Puerto Rico. Specimens were either observed by the authors, discovered in dried insect collections, or retrieved from searching through online photographs available from the citizen science project iNaturalist and the photo-sharing website Flickr. These new records and the wide distribution of H. axyridis in Latin America suggest several invasion events, which have gone unnoticed until now. We stress the need for further, large-scale monitoring and show the advantage of citizen science to assess the presence of invasive alien species.
Highlights
Citizen scientists, non-professionals who engage in scientific investigations, are of all ages
In this study we report H. axyridis from tropical Central America based on personal observations and dried specimens from museum collections
We report here a total of 1096 individual records of H. axyridis and show a wide distribution of this species in Central and South America
Summary
Non-professionals who engage in scientific investigations, are of all ages. During the last 150 years amateur scientists have become increasingly marginalized, whereas the sciences professionalized [4]. There are examples in which citizen science shows incredible value. Projects that focus on large-scale ecological questions, often rely on citizen science input to offer simultaneous coverage of large geographic areas for the generation of useful datasets. Such projects might otherwise not be manageable by professional scientists alone due to logistical reasons and financial and time constraints [4]. Examples are the North American Breeding Bird Survey Examples are the North American Breeding Bird Survey (https://www. pwrc.usgs.gov/bbs/), the UK Ladybird Survey (http://www.ladybird-survey.org/) [5,6], and the Reed Life Survey (http://reeflifesurvey.com)
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