We - a group of PhD students at the University of Notre Dame and University of Nevada, Reno - launched a citizen science project – Pieris Project (pierisproject.org)– to enlist the help of the public to collect an invasive butterfly (cabbage white) from across its range. We have now received about 800 butterflies from more than half the US states and 8 countries.
In an effort to get the word out about our project and raise some money for our research, we are hoping that people from ECOLOG community (you) would be interested in helping. We still need: 1) Help collecting a few butterflies from states in the southern and central US (before winter arrives). Here is what we have so far http://www.pierisproject.org/learn.html If you know of anyone who might be interested in helping, please direct them to our website - pierisproject.org 2) Help funding our research. We want to share with the public how we as scientists explore how species adapt to changes in their environment. Therefore, we want to sequence as many of the butterflies that people sent in, so that each of their contributions can be part of our research. To do this we launched a crowd-funding campaign on Experiment.com in hopes of raising $6,000. Any help in spreading the word or donations would be extremely appreciated. Here is our crowd-funding campaign https://experiment.com/projects/pieris-project-using-citizen-science-to-learn-how-species-will-respond-to-climate-change One of our incentives for donating is what we are calling a “Backyard Genomics Explorer Kit.” These would make a great gift for a family member to get them out exploring the diversity in their backyard, and help us do some great science ;)
