Well, the dust has settled as Wildlife CSI – Summer 2013 officially closed at midnight last night. Over the past seven weeks, you folks have made a most significant contribution to this ecological research, categorizing 80,800 images! Thanks so much for your willingness to participate in this citizen science endeavor. We hope that it provided some fun and gave you a deeper appreciation for the important ecological roles of scavengers. Thank also to the members of our CSI coordinating team for their various roles making this program possible. There is a lot of database and other IT support that goes on behind the scenes.
The final team rankings appear here. The three top-ranking teams, Team TOSH (Prince Edward Island), The Jack Sparrows (South Carolina), and The Red-Hot Red-Shouldereds (Connecticut), will each receive prizes (gift certificates of $300, 200, and 100, respectively). Congratulations on your spectacular performances!
We also had some amazing individual performances, including two individuals who each categorized over 12,000 images! I will shortly be in touch with you individually to provide the certificate documenting your participation.
Although Wildlife CSI – Summer 2013 is now over, you are certainly welcome to continue to contribute image categorizations as an individual outside the context of the contest. Now that you are experienced with our on-line citizen science tools, we hope that some of you may use them with your students. Perhaps we can offer another program for teachers next summer.
Again, thanks to all of you who dedicated some of your precious summer time to this effort.