New PanAf Paper: Local genetic adaptation to habitat in wild chimpanzees

We have a new PanAf paper out titled " Local genetic adaptation to habitat in wild chimpanzees " in Science

You can read our press release HERE

Editor's Summary:

Adaptation to different environments can include responding to a myriad of pressures, from diseases to differences in water abundance. Of the great apes, chimpanzees are most similar to humans in that they inhabit a range of environments from savannahs to rainforests. Ostridge et al. sequenced exomes from 388 chimpanzees using fecal samples to investigate how selection has acted on these animals. Signatures of selection differed by environment, with forest-dwelling chimpanzee populations bearing variants in genes associated with disease resistance. This study demonstrates the utility of environmentally collected DNA in an endangered species and provides insights into adaptation in our closest living relative.

Take the Chimp&See Challenge!

It’s August, and we invite you to take the Chimp&See Challenge!

We are 70% through the Mathematical Treefort site, that’s 53,000 video clips processed so far!

As a (hopefully) final push for this site, we invite you to do 5 classifications each day, every day for all of August! 

If you are already a regular annotator, and that goal seems too easy: set your own target! You could go for 10, 20…50 classifications per day! Pick a number and stay consistent! If you miss a day, double up on the next day. 😀

If you want to participate – sign up here: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/sassydumbledore/chimp-and-see/talk/2279/3401975 so we know to track your classifications for the month. 

Complete the challenge and win Chimp&See swag! (as long as supplies last 😏)

See you at chimpandsee.org!

Mimi & the Chimp&See team

Our latest peer-reviewed Chimp&See paper is out!

We are so very happy to announce our latest peer-reviewed Chimp&See paper has been published in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Evolution titled “Highly precise community science annotations of video camera-trapped fauna in challenging environments”

https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rse2.402

Even though they require more time for annotation as compared to stills, camera trap videos provide valuable acoustic and visual information on species behaviour and can improve identification of individuals. 

Using the Community Science (CS) platform Chimp&See (chimpandsee.org), we found that when comparing classification of 13,531 one-minute video clips done by a professional ecologist to those done by 1,744 Chimp&See community scientists, the overall, annotation precision was between 95.4% and 98.1%. Further, citizen scientists provide a wealth of additional information through additional annotations via hashtags in discussion boards. 

Our annotated video data set is already being used for AI algorithm training and our findings demonstrate the competence of community scientists with challenging videos, and hold great promise for future studies on animal behaviour and population monitoring. 

And a MASSIVE thank you and panthoot to our amazing mod @Eweforia (Carol) who made this incredible video abstract of our paper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQiuAICI-yg

Finally, thank YOU for all your contributions to Chimp&See!!! Since it’s the summer, we have seen a little dip in classifications. We are about 65% through the current site, if you haven’t visited us in a while, please come to ChimpandSee.org today and help us complete the current site! Even 5 or 10 classifications a day help tremendously!

Thank you!

Mimi and the Chimp&See Team

New Chimp&See paper : Highly precise community science annotations of video camera-trapped fauna in challenging environments.

 New Chimp&See paper out in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation: "Highly precise community science annotations of video camera-trapped fauna in challenging environments."  https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rse2.402

Even though they require more time for annotation as compared to stills, camera trap videos provide valuable acoustic and visual information on species behaviour and can improve identification of individuals. 

Using the Community Science (CS) platform Chimp&See (chimpandsee.org), we found that when comparing classification of 13,531 one-minute video clips done by a professional ecologist to those done by 1,744 Chimp&See community scientists, the overall, annotation precision was between 95.4% and 98.1%. Further, citizen scientists provide a wealth of additional information through additional annotations via hashtags in discussion boards. 

Our annotated video data set is already being used for AI algorithm training and our findings demonstrate the competence of community scientists with challenging videos, and hold great promise for future studies on animal behaviour and population monitoring. 

And a MASSIVE thank you and panthoot to our amazing mod @Eweforia (Carol) who made this incredible video abstract of our paper

Visit us at ChimpandSee.org today and contribute to research and conservation !

Matching of other animals

It's always super exciting to find a chimp, gorilla, leopard or elephant, but all animals contribute to the health of the rainforest and identifying them helps us understand ecosystems. It’s not often that a duiker or baboon or even a hyrax stands out from the crowd and can be identified as an individual, but sometimes a health issue or an unusual trait makes them unique. We can learn more about these unique animals if they are spotted multiple times. For instance, it is possible to see if they stay in an area, or manage to thrive despite injuries.

So if you spot a health issue (#health_issue) or an injury (#injury) or a distinctive trait (#atypical), please tag it or let moderator Libby know by entering @burdock and get the chance to name a special animal. If you would like to know more about Other Matchable Animals, go to the new Other Matchable Animals Talk Board.

Here are three that volunteers have found and named:

If you would like to know more about C&S’s Health Issue Mini-project, follow this link on the blue banner on C&S screens.

Libby and the Chimp&See team

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day, dear Chimp&See friends!

Our Florid Postern site is fully complete and we can tell you that we classified a whopping 127,624 video clips and identified 34 chimpanzee individuals, bringing our total number of identified chimps to 923 at Chimp&See since we started 9 years ago on April 22nd, 2015!!!

We’ve also been hard at work at our Mathematical Treefort site with classifications, chimp, elephant and gorilla identification all going on at the same time! It’s been a whirlwind deep in the rainforest of Central Africa.

Did you know that if you find an interesting clip on Chimp&See you can tag it with #dailyzoo – this will put it into our “best of” collection where you can see the highlight videos from every site. Here are some of the highlights from Mathematical Treefort so far: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/sassydumbledore/chimp-and-see/talk/search?query=dailyzoo+mathematicaltreefort

We are about 1/3rd of the way through the current site, so lots more to see, find and annotate – come join us when you can! Even a few annotations a day add up and help our data set!

Panthoots and thank you!

The Chimp&See Team

Why we do Chimp Matching

Dear Chimp&See friends

Thank you so much for all your hard work annotating videos at our new site, MathematicalTreefort! Feel like a change? There is a whole lot more to do at Chimp&See!

For one, there’s the hashtagging of videos you classified with the exact species or behavioural tags, which allows us a more thorough analysis of our data. Want to get started? Check out our hashtagging video tutorial

On top of species identification, another big goal of Chimp&See is to get precise population site estimates for each and every site. For this reason, we do chimp matching to figure out all the unique individuals we have seen (and seen again, and again and again…if we are lucky 😀). At the end of every site we determine the minimum number of males, females, juveniles and infants and from there use mathematical models to estimate the population size. During chimp matching, we also discuss the behaviours we see and any signs of disease, injuries or other hazards. This is all important data for the conservation of chimpanzees. Chimp Matching at MathematicalTreefort, or MT in short, starts on January 29th! 

At MT we’re going even further! Among the animals we see are African Forest Elephants and Western Lowland Gorillas. Both species are classed as 'Critically Endangered' on the IUCN Red List. Therefore, it is of interest to determine the population size and different demographic parameters like sex, age class and group size for these species too. For this, we are going to need to identify individuals, and we like to invite everyone to contribute in the matching and hashtagging process. The following links lead you to the elephant matching board and the gorilla matching board on Chimp&SeeTalk.

So don’t hesitate, participate and try something new to help save endangered animals. Thank you so much for your contribution!

Your Chimp&See team