Field testing a rare species bioacoustic smartphone application: Challenges and future considerations

The New Forest cicada is a declining species native to the UK, and the last unconfirmed sighting was in 2000. One of the difficulties in identifying the cicada is that it sings at a high frequency typically inaudible to adults. In this paper we describe a field test of a novel citizen science smartphone application designed to detect and classify the cicada´s call. We discuss some of the obstacles to studying this novel technology, and describe the results from a user trial with a simulated cicada. Our observations are then used to inform a series of design considerations for those developing a similar class of application, and improvements for the application itself.