Enhancing diversity knowledge through marine citizen science and social platforms: The case of Hermodice carunculata (Annelida, Polychaeta)

The aim of this research is to set a successful strategy for engaging citizen marine scientists and to obtain reliable data on marine species. The case study of this work is the bearded fireworm Hermodice carunculata, a charismatic species spreading from the southern Mediterranean probably in relation to global warming. To achieve research objectives, some emerging technologies (mainly social platforms) were combined with web ecological knowledge (i.e., data, pictures and videos about the target species published on the WWW for non-scientific purposes) and questionnaires, in order to invite people to collect ecological data on the amphinomid worm from the Adriatic Sea and to interact with involved people. In order to address future fruitful citizen science campaigns, strengths and weakness of each used method were illustrated; for example, the importance of informing and thanking involved people by customizing interactions with citizens was highlighted. Moreover, a decisive boost in people engagement may be obtained through sharing the information about citizen science project in online newspapers. Finally, the work provides novel scientific information on the polychete's distribution, the northernmost occurrence record of H. carunculata in the Mediterranean Sea and new insights on predatory behavior on other living benthic species.