About the Australian Biocontrol Hub

Citizen scientists and biocontrol end-users (including farmers, natural resource managers, community groups and others) play an important role in monitoring biocontrol agent releases, and recording field observations of agent occurrence. However, significant barriers can prevent biocontrol agent data being captured, shared and used. Maintaining and accessing long-term monitoring data is particularly problematic.

The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) is a national on-line biodiversity database that has potential to address these barriers. The ALA contains tens of millions of user-submitted species occurrence records from field observations, collections and surveys. Data such as location coordinates, photographs, and species and host information, can be uploaded and later accessed in spreadsheets or species distribution maps.
This resource has tremendous potential for biocontrol, as anyone is able to:

1. record biocontrol agent release and establishment data;


2. capture observations of biocontrol agent spread;


3. ensure biocontrol agent distribution data is readily accessible, and


4. access biocontrol information and references.

A custom-made app facilitates the collection of data from the field via smartphone technology. The Atlas of Living Australia, combined with smartphone technology and a custom-made app, has potential to transform the assessment of biocontrol agent establishment and spread, and facilitate adoption of biocontrol by end-users.

To learn more, and to participate in one of the many weed biocontrol projects, simply click on the “Go to biocontrol projects” button on the Hub home-page.

This project is supported by the Atlas of Living Australia, and is funded by Agriculture Victoria, Meat and Livestock Australia and the Australian Government Department of Agriculture and Water Resources as part of its Rural R&D for Profit Programme.