Realizing a synergy between research and education: how participation in ant monitoring helps raise biodiversity awareness in a resource-poor country

Biodiversity-rich, resource-poor countries need to allocate scarce resources to the competing goals of identifying and monitoring their biodiversity and educating their populace about it. Often only relatively wealthy individuals participate in biodiversity-related volunteering, while the poor are left on the margins. We present a case study that shows how monitoring and education can be combined. South African high school scholars from mostly disadvantaged communities participated in ant monitoring in transformed sites and received lessons using…