BOBeetles

Have you ever seen two stag beetles fighting? Are you interested in insect behavior? Are you curious about nature and insect life? Then this app is made for you!  Come join us in the first behavioural study on protected insects in Europe! You will get to observe beautiful big beetles in natural areas, reporting their activities! Don’t worry, you don’t have to be an expert to do so, we will guide you through the process, providing all necessary information on the app and on the linked website, and you will soon become a BOB App volunteer! The project has three targets, all very easy to recognize on the field (they are flagship species!): we are talking about the stag beetle (Lucanus cervus), the rosalia longicorn (Rosalia alpina), and the funereal longhorn beetle (Morimus asper). These three beetles have two main things in common: they are all protected under the European Habitats Directive and they all rely on dead wood as a source during the larval stages for their development (known as ‘saproxylic’). Observations are really easy to perform: once you find one of the project targets, observe it for 5 min and fill in the requested information on the app. Ta-da, you contributed to our project! If you are not sure about the beetle species you are looking at, don’t worry, you can still contribute to the project by uploading pictures and describing what you see: our expert will take care of the rest. Get to know more about beetles, especially protected ones: download the BOB App! The BOB App is running on the SPOTTERON Citizen Science Platform at www.spotteron.net.