MammalWeb

MammalWeb collates data from motion sensing “camera traps”, set up to photograph and monitor wild mammals in the UK as well as other countries within Europe.

Camera trap image of a roe deer taken by Roland Ascroft

MammalWeb is a citizen science platform intended to collate data to inform us about the distribution and ecology of mammals. Mammals are difficult to monitor due to their elusive nature, with many species only coming out at night and not in great numbers. This makes it difficult to find out where they are and how they behave. Knowing these things is important for a wide range of applications, including conservation and the sustainable development of our natural landscape. MammalWeb collates data from motion sensing “camera traps”, set up to photograph and monitor wild mammals in the UK as well as other countries within Europe. These cameras don’t trap animals – but they take pictures of animals that pass in front of them. To gain good coverage, we need lots of people to contribute by deploying camera traps in their area. You can get involved as an individual, organisation, community group, or school. If you happen to have your own camera trap, you can easily upload images and information to the MammalWeb platform (via the ‘Trapper’ tab) to contribute directly to the project. Since there may be many thousands of photos/videos, we also need help to identify what’s in them! No matter your age or knowledge of animals, you can classify images and videos on MammalWeb (via the ‘Spotter’ tab). By collating and classifying camera trap images and videos on a common platform, we can start to piece together the distribution and behaviour of wild mammals, as well as the factors that affect those.

Publications

Hsing, P.-Y., Coghill, L., Ryder, J., Austin, M., Dooley, S., Ellison, A., Fenwick, C., Garland, M., Humphrey, P., Proudlock, H., Robson, A., Steer, C., Turnbull, L., Kent, V.T., Bradley, S.P., Hill, R.A., Ascroft, R. & Stephens, P.A. (2020) Citizen scientists: school students conducting, contributing to and communicating ecological research – experiences of a school-university partnership. School Science Review 101, 67-74

Link: https://dro.dur.ac.uk/30457/2/30457.pdf?DDD1+dbl0ps

Green, S.E., Rees, J.P., Stephens, P.A., Hill, R.A. & Giordano, A.J. (2020) Innovations in Camera Trapping Technology and Approaches: Applications for Citizen Science. Animals 10, 132

Link: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/1/132

Hsing, P.-Y., Bradley, S.P., Kent, V.T., Hill, R.A., Smith, G.C., Whittingham, M.J., Cokill, J., Crawley, D., MammalWeb Volunteers, Stephens, P.A. (2018) Economical crowdsourcing for camera trap image classification. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation 4, 361-374

Link: https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rse2.84

A short overview of each of the above papers can be found here: https://www.mammalweb.org/en/about/mammalweb-s-findings

Camera trap image of a red fox with prey taken by Roland Ascroft

Camera trap image of a badger taken by students MammalWeb

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MammalWeb

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Publications