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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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
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:	Date Event 7 March 2023 Published 21 December 2022 Available 11 December 2022 Accepted
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:	Project/Grant ID RIOXX Funder Name Funder ID 20-0850-000-SA California Department of Food and Agriculture http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100006759 BBS/OS/CP/000001 [BBSRC] Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000268 TH42222FR09 UK government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs UNSPECIFIED
Open Access Version:	bioRxiv

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