Citizen naturalists are aiding scientific research

Ever see a cool bug or plant and want to know what it is? There’s an app for that — and it’s helping scientific research.

Naturalists are people who observe, document, and study the natural world — not to be confused with naturists, who prefer living in the nude. Although, now that we think about it, not mutually exclusive!

App iNaturalist…

… began as a master’s project for a group of UC Berkeley School of Information students in 2008, and is now a nonprofit. Users can upload photos of plants and animals and share them with each other and research partners, who use them in their studies. 

• As of September 2024, the platform contained 200m+ unique observations, uploaded by 3.3m global users, according to a new study published in BioScience.
• iNaturalist data has been used in 5k+ peer-reviewed papers, including ~1.4k in 2022 alone.
• These articles spanned 638 taxonomic groups and 128 countries.

How does this help researchers?

Lead author Brittany Mason told Gizmodo that the data doesn’t just include where a species is found, but information including “habitat, species coloration, behavior, and more.”

All of this data has helped researchers identify new species, track invasive organizations, study climate change, and learn about animal diets and behaviors.

For example: 

• In 2019, a photographer in northern China uploaded a photo that helped identify a new species, the mountain ghost stiletto fly, per The New York Times. The study found 3.7% of the aforementioned articles documented a new species.
• A 2023 paper noted that the jaguarundi, a wild cat, had moved on from some of its territory in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
• In 2011, a Colombian user uploaded the first photo captured of a living rare weasel after he encountered it standing on his toilet. Scientists had previously believed the weasel was extinct. 

The study’s authors noted that while data from normies like us can’t replace observations from field biologists, it can — and clearly has — helped and expedited the process.

Feel like going on a nature walk? Here’s a list of ongoing iNaturalist projects, and there’s probably one near you.