ZEN lab
Numerical and
Experimental Zoology
Citizen Science Activities
Citizen Science has a key role in our research. Especially, we are strongly involved in identifying butterflies specimens in the iNaturalist platform. Up to now, almost 50000 images have been identified by our lab.
Every year a different destination is chosen and, for a week, a group of international researchers will travel across gorgeous Italian landscapes to study and collect butterflies, in order to discover and describe their still largely unknown diversity! During the trips, researchers will meet the public to explain the importance of butterflies and to involve citizens in the collection and in the conservation actions!
The Butterfly Monitoring Scheme Italia (ITBMS) is part of the European butterfly monitoring network Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (eBMS) and, thanks to the ABLE (Assessing Butterflies in Europe) project, has been active in our territory since 2019.
Our group is the coordinator of Central Italy for the Italian butterfly monitoring scheme.
Walk at dusk to discover the Night Creatures along the Nature Trail of the Reserve, accompanied by the naturalists of the Lacemod laboratory of the University of L'Aquila and by entomologists, assisted by the staff of the Carabinieri Biodiversity Department of L'Aquila.
In times of coronavirus epidemics, monitoring biodiversity is increasingly complex: regions "change color" and with it the possibility of going out into the field changes. This is why we have thought of an initiative that can be conducted in any circumstance: from home or in the field.
The event was born from the idea of ​​using the time spent in isolation due to the coronavirus epidemic to search for photographs of animals and plants on their hard drives or mobile phones and send them to a virtual Bioblitz project.