Type of site | Citizen science |
---|---|
Available in | 56 [1] languages |
Area served | Worldwide |
Founder(s) |
|
URL | inaturalist |
Commercial | No |
Registration | Optional |
Users | 3.2 million registered users (January 2023) [update] [2] |
Launched | 2008 |
Current status | Active |
iNaturalist is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit social network of naturalists, citizen scientists, and biologists built on the concept of mapping and sharing observations of biodiversity across the globe. [3] [4] iNaturalist may be accessed via its website or from its mobile applications. [5] [6] iNaturalist includes an automated species identification tool, and users further assist each other in identifying organisms from photographs. As of 24 February 2024 [update] , iNaturalist users had contributed approximately 172.751.520 observations of plants, animals, fungi, and other organisms worldwide, and around 350,000 users were active in the previous 30 days. [7]
iNaturalist describes itself as "an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature", with its primary goal being to connect people to nature. [8] Although it is not a science project itself, iNaturalist is a platform for science and conservation efforts, providing valuable open data to research projects, land managers, other organizations, and the public. [8] [9] It is the primary application for crowd-sourced biodiversity data in places such as Mexico, southern Africa, and Australia, [10] [11] [12] and the project has been called "a standard-bearer for natural history mobile applications." [13] Most of iNaturalist's software is open source. [14]
iNaturalist began in 2008 as a UC Berkeley School of Information Master's final project of Nate Agrin, Jessica Kline, and Ken-ichi Ueda. [3] Agrin and Ueda continued work on the site with Sean McGregor, a web developer. In 2011, Ueda began collaboration with Scott Loarie, a research fellow at Stanford University and lecturer at UC Berkeley. Ueda and Loarie are the current co-directors of iNaturalist.org. [3] The organization merged with the California Academy of Sciences on April 24, 2014. [15] In 2017, iNaturalist became a joint initiative between the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society. [3]
Since 2012, the number of participants and observations has roughly doubled each year. [16] In 2014, iNaturalist reached 1 million observations [17] and as of October 2023 [update] there were 181 million observations (163 million verifiable). [note 1] [7]
On 11 July 2023, iNaturalist became registered as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. [18]
Users can interact with iNaturalist in several ways:
On the iNaturalist.org website, visitors can search the public dataset and interact with other people adding observations and identifications. The website provides tools for registered users to add, identify, and discuss observations, write journal posts, explore information about species, and create project pages to recruit participation in and coordinate work on their topics of interest. [21] [22] [23]
On the iNaturalist mobile app, registered users can create and share nature observations to the online dataset, explore observations both nearby and around the world, and learn about different species. [21] [24]
Seek by iNaturalist, a separate app marketed to families, requires no online account registration and all observations may remain private. [25] Seek incorporates features of gamification, such as providing a list of nearby organisms to find and encouraging the collection of badges and participation in challenges. [26] Seek was initially released in the spring of 2018. [25]
The iNaturalist platform is based on crowdsourcing of observations and identifications. An iNaturalist observation records a person's encounter with an individual organism at a particular time and place. [21] An iNaturalist observation may also record evidence of an organism, such as animal tracks, nests, or scat. The scope of iNaturalist excludes natural but inert subjects such as geologic or hydrologic features. Users typically upload photos as evidence of their findings, though audio recordings are also accepted, and such evidence is not a strict requirement. Users may share observation locations publicly, "obscure" them to display a less precise location or make the locations completely private.
On iNaturalist, other users add identifications to each other's observations in order to confirm or improve the identification of the observation. [21] Observations are classified as "Casual", "Needs ID" (needs identification), or "Research Grade" based on the quality of the data provided and the community identification process. [21] Any quality of data can be downloaded from iNaturalist and "Research Grade" observations are often incorporated into other online databases such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and the Atlas of Living Australia. [9] [27]
In addition to observations being identified by others in the community, iNaturalist includes an automated species identification tool, first released in 2017. [28] Images can be identified via a computer vision model which has been trained on the large database of the observations on iNaturalist. [21] Multiple species suggestions are typically provided with the suggestion that the software guesses to be most likely is at the top of the list. A broader taxon such as a genus or family is commonly provided if the model is unsure of the species. It is trained once or twice a year, and the threshold for species included in the training set has changed over time. [29] It can be difficult for the model to guess correctly if the species in question is infrequently observed or hard to identify from images alone; or if the image submitted has poor lighting, is blurry, or contains multiple subjects.
Users have created and contributed to tens of thousands of different projects on iNaturalist. [7] [30] The platform is commonly used to record observations during bioblitzes, which are biological surveying events that attempt to record all the species that occur within a designated area, and a specific project type on iNaturalist. [31] [32] [33] Other project types include collections of observations by location or taxon or documenting specific types of observations such as animal tracks and signs, [34] the spread of invasive species, roadkill, [35] fishing catches, or discovering new species. [22] In 2011, iNaturalist was used as a platform to power the Global Amphibian and Global Reptile BioBlitzes, in which observations were used to help monitor the occurrence and distribution of the world's reptiles and amphibian species. [36] The US National Park Service partnered with iNaturalist to record observations from the 2016 National Parks BioBlitz. That project exceeded 100,000 observations in August 2016. [31] In 2017, the United Nations Environment Programme teamed up with iNaturalist to celebrate World Environment Day. [37] . In 2022, Reef Ecologic teamed up with iNaturalist to celebrate World Oceans Day.
In 2016, Lila Higgins from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and Alison Young from the California Academy of Sciences co-founded the City Nature Challenge (CNC). In the first City Nature Challenge, naturalists in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area documented over 20,000 observations with the iNaturalist platform. [38] In 2017, the CNC expanded to 16 cities across the United States and collected over 125,000 observations of wildlife in 5 days. [39] The CNC expanded to a global audience in 2018, with 68 cities participating from 19 countries, with some cities using community science platforms other than iNaturalist to participate. [32] In 4 days, over 17,000 people cataloged over 440,000 nature observations in urban regions around the world. [40] In 2019, the CNC once again expanded, with 35,000 participants in 159 cities collecting 964,000 observations of over 31,000 species. [32] Although fewer observations were documented during the 2020 City Nature Challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic (when the CNC became collaborative as opposed to competitive), more cities and people participated, and more species were found than in previous years. [41]
Users have the option to license their observations, photos, and audio recordings in several ways, including for the public domain, Creative Commons, or with all rights reserved. To encourage the sharing of information and to reduce costs, iNaturalist encourages users to license media with Creative Commons licenses. [42] The default license is CC BY-NC, [42] meaning others are free to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the media as long as appropriate credit is given, changes are indicated, a link to the license is provided, and it is not used for commercial purposes. [43]
Observations and media licensed with Creative Commons licenses are often shared elsewhere, including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (excluding share-alike and no derivatives licenses), [44] Atlas of Living Australia, [45] and Wikipedia (excluding noncommercial and no derivatives licenses) [46] through regular imports [21] [45] or user scripts such as iNaturalist2Commons [47] and Wiki Loves iNaturalist. [48]
The iNaturalist website and mobile apps are open-source software released under the MIT License. [14] [49]
As of January 2022, more than 2,000 research results have been published that cite the iNaturalist research-grade observations hosted on the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), often in the fields of ecology, conservation, and climate change. [50] Many articles focus on climate-driven range shifts and expansions. For example, in 2015, data from iNaturalist was used to show that the Hopkin's rose nudibranch (Okenia rosacea) is moving northward. [51] Other articles focus on the description of new species or rediscovery of species previously considered extinct. For example, a species of snail, Myxostoma petiverianum , first described in the 1700s, was also rediscovered in Vietnam. [52] Additionally, in 2013, a citizen scientist in Colombia uploaded a photo of a poison dart frog, which researchers determined was a previously unrecognized species now known as Andinobates cassidyhornae . [53] [54] Other research has focused on the morphology or coloration of species observations. For example, a study in 2019 assessed the relationship between wing coloration and temperature in the dragonfly species Pachydiplax longipennis. [55] In 2023, a species of mantis first discovered with the aid of iNaturalist was named Inimia nat so that its abbreviated form, I. nat, would be a word play that pays homage to iNaturalist. [56]
Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic, species, and ecosystem level. Biodiversity is not distributed evenly on Earth; it is usually greater in the tropics as a result of the warm climate and high primary productivity in the region near the equator. Tropical forest ecosystems cover less than 10% of earth's surface and contain about 90% of the world's species. Marine biodiversity is usually higher along coasts in the Western Pacific, where sea surface temperature is highest, and in the mid-latitudinal band in all oceans. There are latitudinal gradients in species diversity. Biodiversity generally tends to cluster in hotspots, and has been increasing through time, but will be likely to slow in the future as a primary result of deforestation. It encompasses the evolutionary, ecological, and cultural processes that sustain life.
A BioBlitz, also written without capitals as bioblitz, is an intense period of biological surveying in an attempt to record all the living species within a designated area. Groups of scientists, naturalists, and volunteers conduct an intensive field study over a continuous time period. There is a public component to many BioBlitzes, with the goal of getting the public interested in biodiversity. To encourage more public participation, these BioBlitzes are often held in urban parks or nature reserves close to cities. Research into the best practices for a successful BioBlitz has found that collaboration with local natural history museums can improve public participation. As well, BioBlitzes have been shown to be a successful tool in teaching post-secondary students about biodiversity.
Citizen science is research conducted with participation from the general public, or amateur/nonprofessional researchers or participants for science, social science and many other disciplines. There are variations in the exact definition of citizen science, with different individuals and organizations having their own specific interpretations of what citizen science encompasses. Citizen science is used in a wide range of areas of study including ecology, biology and conservation, health and medical research, astronomy, media and communications and information science.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a member-supported unit of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, which studies birds and other wildlife. It is housed in the Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity in Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary. Approximately 250 scientists, professors, staff, and students work in a variety of programs devoted to the Lab's mission: interpreting and conserving the Earth's biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science focused on birds. Work at the Lab is supported primarily by its 75,000 members.
Biodiversity informatics is the application of informatics techniques to biodiversity information, such as taxonomy, biogeography or ecology. It is defined as the application of Information technology technologies to management, algorithmic exploration, analysis and interpretation of primary data regarding life, particularly at the species level organization. Modern computer techniques can yield new ways to view and analyze existing information, as well as predict future situations. Biodiversity informatics is a term that was only coined around 1992 but with rapidly increasing data sets has become useful in numerous studies and applications, such as the construction of taxonomic databases or geographic information systems. Biodiversity informatics contrasts with "bioinformatics", which is often used synonymously with the computerized handling of data in the specialized area of molecular biology.
Automated species identification is a method of making the expertise of taxonomists available to ecologists, parataxonomists and others via digital technology and artificial intelligence. Today, most automated identification systems rely on images depicting the species for the identification. Based on precisely identified images of a species, a classifier is trained. Once exposed to a sufficient amount of training data, this classifier can then identify the trained species on previously unseen images.
The Catalogue of Life is an online database that provides an index of known species of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms. It was created in 2001 as a partnership between the global Species 2000 and the American Integrated Taxonomic Information System. The Catalogue is used by research scientists, citizen scientists, educators, and policy makers. The Catalogue is also used by the Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Barcode of Life Data System, Encyclopedia of Life, and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. The Catalogue currently compiles data from 165 peer-reviewed taxonomic databases that are maintained by specialist institutions around the world. As of September 2022, the COL Checklist lists 2,067,951 of the world's 2.2m extant species known to taxonomists on the planet at present time.
The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is a free, online encyclopedia intended to document all of the 1.9 million living species known to science. It aggregates content to form "page"s for every known species. Content is compiled from existing trusted databases which are curated by experts and it calls on the assistance of non-experts throughout the world. It includes video, sound, images, graphics, information on characteristics, as well as text. In addition, the Encyclopedia incorporates species-related content from the Biodiversity Heritage Library, which digitizes millions of pages of printed literature from the world's major natural history libraries. The BHL digital content is indexed with the names of organisms using taxonomic indexing software developed by the Global Names project. The EOL project was initially backed by a US$50 million funding commitment, led by the MacArthur Foundation and the Sloan Foundation, who provided US$20 million and US$5 million, respectively. The additional US$25 million came from five cornerstone institutions—the Field Museum, Harvard University, the Marine Biological Laboratory, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Smithsonian Institution. The project was initially led by Jim Edwards and the development team by David Patterson. Today, participating institutions and individual donors continue to support EOL through financial contributions.
eBird is an online database of bird observations providing scientists, researchers and amateur naturalists with real-time data about bird distribution and abundance. Originally restricted to sightings from the Western Hemisphere, the project expanded to include New Zealand in 2008, and again expanded to cover the whole world in June 2010. eBird has been described as an ambitious example of enlisting amateurs to gather data on biodiversity for use in science.
Computational sustainability is an emerging field that attempts to balance societal, economic, and environmental resources for the future well-being of humanity using methods from mathematics, computer science, and information science fields. Sustainability in this context refers to the world's ability to sustain biological, social, and environmental systems in the long term.
iSpot is a website developed and hosted by the Open University with funding from the Open Air Laboratories (OPAL) network with an online community intended to connect nature enthusiasts of all levels.
The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) is an organisation tasked with research and dissemination of information on biodiversity, and legally mandated to contribute to the management of the country's biodiversity resources.
Fungal Diversity Survey, or FunDiS, is a nonprofit citizen science organization formerly known as North American Mycoflora Project, Inc. FunDiS aims to document the diversity and distribution of fungi across North America “in order to increase awareness of their critical role in the health of ecosystems and allow us to better protect them in a world of rapid climate change and habitat loss.” The project encourages amateurs, working with professionals, to contribute observations to online databases vetted by experts, and to collect and document fungi for DNA barcoding. Fungal Diversity Survey, Inc. is a Charitable 501(c)(3) organization registered in Indiana, USA.
QuestaGame, launched in 2014 in Canberra, Australia, is a mobile app game for photographing and identifying fauna, flora, and fungi. Sightings are verified by experts and gain points for players. The game leverages citizen science to help document species occurrences, adding data to databases such as Atlas of Living Australia. Ranger Vision is a classroom version. QuestaGame has been reported as driving citizen science by mapping biodiversity, discovering new species, and averting biosecurity risks.
The City Nature Challenge is an annual, global, community science competition to document urban biodiversity. The challenge is a bioblitz that engages residents and visitors to find and document plants, animals, and other organisms living in urban areas. The goals are to engage the public in the collection of biodiversity data, with three awards each year for the cities that make the most observations, find the most species, and engage the most people.
SeaKeys is a large collaborative marine biodiversity project funded through the Foundational Biodiversity Information Program in South Africa. The purpose of the project is to collect and distribute genetic, species and ecosystem information relating to marine biodiversity in southern Africa, which may be used to support informed decision-making about the marine environment.
Orobanche reticulata is a species of broomrape known by the common name thistle broomrape. It is a parasitic plant whose host is normally the creeping thistle. It is native to the lowlands of Western Europe and Central Asia, but in the United Kingdom it is a rare and protected plant, growing only in Yorkshire, on grassland sites such as Quarry Moor.
Bhutan Biodiversity Portal(འབྲུག་སྐྱེ་ལྡན་རིགས་སྣ་འཆར་སྒོ།) is a consortium based citizen science website comprising key biodiversity data generating agencies and can be used by anyone. The portal is an official online repository of data on Bhutanese biodiversity.
Mosquito Alert is a cooperative citizen science project, currently run as a non-profit and coordinated by four public research centers in Spain. The aim of the project is to study, monitor, and fight the spread of invasive mosquitoes transmitting global diseases such as dengue, Zika, Chikungunya or West Nile fever. The Asian tiger mosquito and the yellow fever mosquito are some of the invasive species that Mosquito Alert watches out for. The project provided the first detection of the Asian bush mosquito Aedes japonicus in Spain in 2018, providing the first report of a population of mosquitos that were located 1,300 km from their previously nearest known location in Europe.
Observation.org is a worldwide platform of naturalists, citizen scientists, and biologists to collect, validate and share biodiversity observations. Observation.org may be accessed via its website or from its mobile applications like ObsIdentify. The Observation.org database holds 233 million nature observations and 79 million photos. It is published and hosted in the Netherlands under Dutch and European law by the non-profit foundation Observation International.