Scientists can track the spread of invasive species by analyzing Twitter posts. This was reported by the University of North Carolina press service.
Invasive species are those that live in alien ecosystems and cause significant damage to them by reducing biodiversity. A classic example of an invasive species is the Australian rabbit, which eats too much vegetation due to a shortage of predators. It is not always possible to trace distribution fields, and therefore scientists are looking for new technologies for such studies.
One of these unconventional sources could be user messages on the internet and Twitter. It differs from other networks in its focus on text messages and horizontal organization, so people tend to post photos of things that surprise them during the day. In particular, OSINT analytics, one of the modern types of intelligence, is based on the analysis of Twitter (and other social networks).
As an experiment, the researchers tracked tweets about two insects (the spotted torch fly and the tomato mimicry moth) collected by the Brandwatch web service. Scientists also read news articles about the appearance of certain insects, collected by Google News and other aggregators. The lantern is an insect native to Asia that can damage or destroy grapes, cherries, hops, some trees and other plants. The research team tracked Pennsylvania torchlight reports only in 2017, and then worldwide between 2011 and 2021. There have also been reports of tomato mimicry moths wreaking havoc on tomato production during the same period.
“We started this study as a proof-of-concept to see if it would be scientifically reasonable to use these sources to monitor the spread of pests. The authors compared information from the insect locations to ensure that these sources accurately reflect already validated scientific information,” the authors write.
It turns out that the increase in the number of messages about these insects in the news and on social networks is associated with recorded cases of mass damage to plants, as well as their reproductive cycles. Also, with the help of social networks, it was possible to detect an outbreak of lantern activity in one county of Pennsylvania that was not included in the official report of the Department of Agriculture.
The scientists conclude that analysis of messages on the Internet could be useful in investigating the distribution of invasive species.