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Visit to the Asomatos primary school providing students with ant collection kits. A photograph of the ant collection kit is provided as inset. Credit - Ioanna Angelidou.

Using citizen science to monitor and raise awareness of ant species in Cyprus

Situated at the heart of the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus is a biodiversity hotspot and rarity centre for ants, hosting a large percentage of both endemic and non-native ant species. This two-year project ‘Biodiversity and spatiotemporal patterns of ants in the Akrotiri Peninsula’, that ran from July 2023 to June 2025, set out with three aims:

1. Provide a baseline of ants in the Akrotiri Peninsula to enhance scientific research around the region’s fauna
2. Raise public awareness and pool, supplement, and summarise our knowledge of the ant fauna of Cyprus, by creating an online information portal about the ‘Ants of Cyprus’
3. Establish and promote a citizen-science recording scheme ‘Antovreis’ for the collection of ants by citizen scientists

Throughout this project, our team described 12 new ant species to science and detected 10 new non-native species on the island. Our investigations uncovered a total of 52 taxa distributed within the Akrotiri UK Sovereign Base Area, accounting for more than half of all ant species currently known from Cyprus.

All available knowledge from literature and material surveys can be found on the ‘Ants of Cyprus’ website, including a dynamic checklist, species profiles, downloadable occurrence records, distributional maps, photographic material, educational material, links to publications and keys, information on non-native species, and much more.

Lastly, a pilot study was launched to assess the potential contribution of citizen-science to ant monitoring. This uncovered new records of two native and two non-native ant species in Cyprus, collected by primary school students.

Detailed results and scientific outputs can be found in the project’s final report, including the publication of 10 scientific articles (with two additional articles in preparation) and the publication of a dataset of published ant records from Cyprus. It also notes the presentation of six posters in scientific congresses, and participation in ten additional workshops, symposia or events.

This project would not have accomplished its goals without the participation of Associate Prof. Sebastian Salata, Prof. (Emeritus) Lech Borowiec, Dr Christos Georgiadis, Mr Evangelos Koutsoukos, Prof. Spyros Sfenthourakis, Mr Marios Papageorgiou, Prof. Helen E Roy and Dr. Angeliki F Martinou.

Written by Jakovos Demetriou. For more information on this Darwin Plus Fellowship project DPLUS200, led by Enalia Physis, please click here.