The Moth versus the Crowd - Tracking an alien invader of conker trees using people power
Publication of new scientific paper a demonstration of how seriously citizen science is now taken by the community of professional scientistsAn army of citizen scientists has helped the professionals understand how a tiny ‘alien’ moth is attacking the UK’s conker (horse-chestnut) trees, and showed that naturally-occurring pest controlling wasps are not able to restrict the moth’s impact. The study’s conclusions are published this week in the open access scientific journal PLOS ONE. No bigger than a grain of rice, the horse-chestnut leaf-mining moth has spread rapidly through England