Working Group 4
Tasks & activities
- Involvement of researchers applying citizen science successfully in other research projects;
- Development of a user-friendly mobile phone application for photographic identification of the most common European tick species occurring on humans and pets (e.g. as a subproject within iNaturalist application);
- Social media campaign to involve volunteer monitoring citizen scientists for broadening our sample and data collection efforts. This will include tick flagging campaigns performed by students trained by experts; on-line questionnaire and photograph/sample sending from animal keepers to find introduced tick species and reporting road-hit wild animals at selected areas. The education of volunteers will have an emphasis on potential risk of infection and personal health protection;
- Design and implementation of social media campaigns to monitor tick-borne pathogen reservoir vertebrates (e.g. hedgehogs, squirrels, rodents) and ticks within urban areas;
- Community education about influence of climate change onto tick and TBD risk, proper prevention methods via social media campaigns, explanatory short videos.
