Turtles of Serbia are Inviting volunteers for a photo session- An update on mobile phone application development

Abstract

Despite of decades-long work of Serbian herpetologists, basic knowledge about some reptile species left much to be desired. Good examples are the Hermann’s Tortoise (Testudo hermanni) and the European Pond Turtle (Emys orbicularis). Although both species enjoy high levels of protection by both national and international legislative, their spatial distribution across Serbia was not well explored. During our field work (Rufford Small Grant projects numbers 12291-1, 16922-2, and 20507-B) we have found 61 novel UTM 10 x 10 km squares for distribution of Testudo hermanni and 49 novel UTM squares for Emys orbicularis. Additionally, our experience from the field proves that people from Serbia love to show pictures and talk about their experiences with reptiles which are intriguing for general public, either in attractive or horrifying ways. Nonetheless, volunteers rarely have opportunity to share their findings with the scientific community. In the course of our projects, we made contacts with enlarging number of volunteers, which sent pictures and coordinates of turtles in their neighbourhood. These are very useful information particularly within the part of the range which was not covered by our field surveys. This led us to an idea to develop an interactive and educative mobile phone application, to serve as a bridge between volunteers from all around Serbia and herpetologists providing help with determination. We hope our new mobile phone application and accompanying website will come handy to curious volunteers interested not only for reptiles, but also amphibians and butterflies.