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The value of volunteer surveillance for the early detection of biological invaders
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van den Bosch, Frank, McRoberts, Neil, Bourhis, Yoann, Parnell, Stephen and Hassall, Kirsty L. (2023) The value of volunteer surveillance for the early detection of biological invaders. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 560 . 111385. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2022.111385 ISSN 0022-5193.
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2022.111385
Abstract
Early detection of invaders requires finding small numbers of individuals across large landscapes. It has been argued that the only feasible way to achieve the sampling effort needed for early detection of an invader is to involve volunteer groups (citizen scientists, passive surveyors, etc.). A key concern is that volunteers may have a considerable false-positive and false-negative rate. The question then becomes whether verification of a report from a volunteer is worth the effort. This question is the topic of this paper. Since we are interested in early detection we calculate the Z% upper limit of the one sided confidence interval of the incidence (fraction infected) and use the term maximum expected plausible incidence for this. We compare the maximum plausible incidence when the expert samples on their own, q ∼, and the maximum plausible incidence when the expert only verifies cases reported by the volunteer surveyor to be infected, q ∼. The maximum plausible incidences q ∼ and q ∼. are related as, q ∼=θ 1-θ q ∼ where θ and θ are the false positive and false negative rate of the volunteer surveyor, respectively. We also show that the optimal monitoring programme consists of verifying only the cases reported by the volunteer surveyor if, T T <θ 1-θ , where T is the time needed for a sample taken by the expert and T is the time needed for an expert to verify a case reported by a volunteer surveyor. Our results can be used to calculate the maximum plausible incidence of a plant disease based on reports of passive surveyors that have been verified by experts and data from experts sampling on their own. The results can also be used in the development phase of a surveillance project to assess whether including passive surveyor reports is useful in the early detection of exotic invaders.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Life Sciences (2010- ) | ||||||||||||
SWORD Depositor: | Library Publications Router | ||||||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Theoretical Biology | ||||||||||||
Publisher: | Elsevier | ||||||||||||
ISSN: | 0022-5193 | ||||||||||||
Official Date: | 7 March 2023 | ||||||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 560 | ||||||||||||
Number of Pages: | 11 | ||||||||||||
Article Number: | 111385 | ||||||||||||
DOI: | 10.1016/j.jtbi.2022.111385 | ||||||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||||||
Copyright Holders: | Elsevier | ||||||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 17 February 2023 | ||||||||||||
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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Open Access Version: |
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