Jisc funds app to help save the autumn conker

A Jisc-funded smartphone app developed by the University of Bristol and Hull University, will appear on the BBC’s One Show this evening to encourage everyone to help save conker trees by using their mobile devices.

Horse chestnut trees, whose conker seeds are responsible for hours of autumn fun, are under attack from a moth which arrived in London in 2002 and now covers half the country. The moth’s caterpillars eat the tree’s leaves from the inside.

The research teams at the Universities of Bristol and Hull have devised a mobile phone app allowing people to upload a photo of any horse chestnut leaves they come across, either with or without the indication of alien moths, which will pin-point their location and help to build up a picture of which areas of the country are suffering most, and how bad the problem is.

Dr Darren Evans from the University of Hull said: “This is an exciting opportunity to take part in a real scientific experiment on a national scale. It’s a big mission for which we’re reliant on the public’s help. Dr Michael Pocock from the University of Bristol added: “We’ve developed the mobile phone app to make it even easier for people to take in this research project. We have over 8000 people involved so far and we’re hopeful that they will play their part in discovering more about the threat to the future of our much cherished conker trees.

“We know that the moth moves at about 30 miles a year across the UK’s horse chestnut tree population. We’d like people in south west and northern England, Wales and Scotland to take part our conker tree science project so we can understand how far the moth has travelled, and people elsewhere else to report how bad the damage is in their area,” added Dr Pocock.

David Flanders Jisc’s programme manager for the project says: “Science is for everyone and now anyone carrying around a smart phone can take part. The power of involving citizens scientists by utilising new technologies is only going to get more exciting in coming years as every one of us will be carrying around scientific tools in our pockets, which means we can help scientists and have fun doing it. 

“The conker tree science - leaf app demonstrates how scientists are going to need to innovate new science techniques around tools like GPS (Geospatial Positioning Software) in combination with their science so we can all be citizen scientists working in a laboratory (virtually) beside them.”

Stephen Fry, one of the most prolific and followed twitterers with just under 3 million followers, tweeted about the app last month.

The study, the largest of its kind in the UK, will give the most up-to-date picture of the spread of the moth. The records will be checked by the project team and then passed to Forest Research to add to its national database, which has been recording the spread of the moth since its arrival and now covers half of the country, including most of south-central England, East Anglia, the Midlands and has most recently spread to Tyneside and Cornwall.

Take part in the experiment and download the app from the project website.

Conker Tree Science is supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (www.nerc.ac.uk) and the development of the Conker Tree Science app is supported by Jisc (www.jisc.ac.uk).