Our very own Victoria Burton, PhD researcher at The Natural History Museum and lead scientist for Earthworm Watch recently received the British Ecological Society (BES) Public Engagement Award (along with Dr. Ali Birkett and Nick Loughlin) at their annual conference. Victoria explained her experiences of attending the conference in her recent blog, where at the conference Victoria gave an overview of Earthworm Watch and the aims of the project.

Victoria’s passion and dedication for delivering earthworm themed activities for Earthworm Watch and her participation at multiple events across the country from the Bristol Festival of Nature to NERC’s ‘Into the Blue’ won through and is a testament to her ability to communicate science to people of all ages. If you would like to get involved or have a burning earthworm-related question, Victoria will be at the Brighton Science Festival for Bright Sparks this weekend.

The earthworm data you collect is making a huge difference and is allowing Victoria and our research scientist Dr. Alan Jones to better understand the diversity, abundance and ecosystem services provided by earthworms. If you are completely new to Earthworm Watch and want to get involved, find out how you can take part here. The more data points we have the better, so if you haven’t submitted your data yet, please do. You can do the survey as many times as you like and we are looking for a range of habitats, so why not try somewhere new.

If you want to help Victoria and Alan even further, then why not have a go at The Earthworm Watch Experiment, which is exploring the impact of manipulation of habitats on earthworm abundance and diversity.