With a smartphone in hand, anyone can be a naturalist. Apps like iNaturalist have surged in popularity over the last 15 years, with millions using them to document wildlife around the world. A new study shows that these observations contribute a deluge of data to scientific research.
Use of iNaturalist has skyrocketed since its launch in 2008. This citizen science database now contains more than 200 million observations logged by over 3 million users globally, according to research published Monday, July 28, in the journal BioScience. This study is the first to comprehensively quantify how everyday people are contributing to biodiversity science through iNaturalist, coauthor Corey Callaghan, a global change ecologist at the University of Florida, told Gizmodo. He and his colleagues conducted a review of thousands of research articles, finding that the number of peer-reviewed studies using iNaturalist data surged more than tenfold in the last five years.
“Beyond documenting where species occur, the photos uploaded to iNaturalist offer a rich source of biological information—capturing habitat, species coloration, behavior, and more,” lead author Brittany Mason, data management analyst in Callaghan’s research group, told Gizmodo in an email. “Researchers are increasingly using this imagery data as a valuable source of ecological and behavioral data.”
The rise of iNaturalist has ushered in a new era of citizen science. This free app—available for both iOS and Android—allows users to record wildlife observations and share their data with research partners such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Unlike some other apps that use AI to identify species, iNaturalist relies on its vast community of users for this task. “Humans need to confirm the identification in order for it to go to research grade,” Callaghan said. This collaborative approach produces a wealth of rigorously vetted data that scientists can use to support their research.
“Many iNaturalist contributors aren’t scientists by training, but the platform’s user-friendly design empowers anyone to meaningfully participate in scientific discovery,” Mason said.
Over 3.5 million iNaturalist users are now helping researchers track species ranges, detect invasive species, monitor climate impacts, and even discover new species, according to Callaghan. In 2011, for example, a user in Columbia documented this century’s first confirmed record of the Columbian Weasel—an extremely rare species. No one had ever photographed one alive before, and this iNaturalist user’s observation contributed to a 2019 study of its distribution in protected areas. The review shows that iNaturalist data have become pervasive in scientific literature, appearing in papers from 128 countries for over 638 taxonomic families.
In the face of a global biodiversity crisis, there is an urgent need for cost-effective and efficient methods to document and assess the status of species, the authors state. As of 2022, 211 plant and animal species had gone extinct in the U.S. alone, and 2,288 were threatened or endangered, according to the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan.
As individuals, it’s easy to feel powerless in a situation like this. This study shows, however, that citizen science is playing an increasingly important role in efforts to monitor, protect, and conserve species. The exponential growth of iNaturalist observations over the past several years has “fundamentally shifted” the landscape of biodiversity research, Callaghan said, and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon.
“Thinking about what’s coming five, ten years from now—it’s mind-boggling,” Callaghan said. “We still don’t know the potential.
