Having Fun with iNaturalist

Kate Watson. AABR Member and iNaturalist addict.

iNaturalist is a powerful tool for conservation. It is the largest citizen science platform in the world, with more than eight million people contributing to it. The Australian branch is backed by CSIRO and the data feeds into the Atlas of Living Australia.

The website can be used to record any species, from amoeba tSlime mouldo giant trees, and the data collected can be filtered in many more ways than just dates, location and species. Eventually, using it becomes almost intuitive. It is no surprise to see that iNaturalist was established just up the road from Silicone Valley.

There are many ways you use iNaturalist

Apart from the value of citizen science data, iNaturalist is a good way to store, sort and retrieve your own records of species using the many filter options or maps.

The records can also be collated in various ways using ‘projects’. A number of very interesting projects have been set up by users. For instance First known photograph of living specimens at https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/first-known-photographs-of-living-specimens.

Large or small projects can be set up by users, for instance a small, three day, AABR project was run during AABRFest in iNaturalist in 2024: AABR Fest 2 – Kariong  https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/aabr-fest-2-kariong.

Thomas Mesaglio who spoke at AABRFest set up a project to record his own observations of the Wategora Reserve – Cooks River Clay Plain Scrub  https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wategora-reserve-cooks-river-clay-plain-scrub-forest.He documented over 1700 species in nearly 9,000 observations in this critically endangered ecological community, which has under 1% of its original area.

Many projects are set up to research a particular issue such as the Gum Tree Guardians project which is mapping the spread of Myrtle Rust https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/gum-tree-guardians or to research what parrots are eating (including exotic food species) https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/hungry-parrots-project.

Sometimes a group of people sets up a project for their community’s purposes such as where they are regenerating a particular area. Hornsby Bushcare – Short Street is an example https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/hornsby-bushcare-short-street which records the.Blackbutt Gully Forest community area that the Bushcare group work.

Data collected is useful for scientific papers, but iNaturalist is also a social media through which a lot can be learned. For instance, I had posted an observation of some ticks that I had removed from a wombat joey, and an acarologist – somebody who studies mites and ticks – identified them and explained the features that distinguish them from other ticks. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/165320370

Occasionally detailed discussions of identity of a species take place between experts, which can be amusing given the obscure detail sometimes involved and the polite passion the exchanges can invoke. (Users of iNaturalist are always polite and collegiate)

The social media aspect is useful for researchers because they can ask the observers questions, either publicly or there is a direct messaging private facility.

If a species is endangered, iNaturalist obscures the location. Sometimes an observer wants to keep a location obscured or private. If the geoprivacy setting of an observation is ‘obscured’ the location is shown as within a 30 kilometre radius. If the geolocation is made ‘private’ then even the continent is not shown. A researcher can contact the observer if they need the exact location, and the observer can decide if they want to give the location details.

A user can choose to ‘follow’ another user if they want to be notified of new observations by that person. For instance, I follow an Australian professional photographer, whose photos of insects and birds are beautiful. He calls himself doggy48 in iNaturalist  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_id=doggy48&verifiable=any

A user may have similar interests to another user and by looking at their iNaturalist ‘profile’ you can see the projects they have joined that you might like to join. This will mean you will receive journals posted in that project and you can add your observations to the project. A very interesting list of projects of one of iNaturalist’s curators is here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/user/thebeachcomber

I have set up a few projects such as the Tree hollows and significant habitat trees project https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/tree-hollows-and-significant-habitat-trees-in-australia . These aim to record the locations of hollow bearing trees and habitat trees in Australia, in order to protect them. More than three hundred wildlife vertebrate species are dependent on tree hollows for habitat and breeding. The journals I have posted in the project include an article about Varroa mites and what they mean for tree hollows: a link to a live feed from a camera in a tree hollow which is occupied by a pair of Greater Gliders and their joey: and a report of a prosecution and fine of the Forestry Corporation of NSW for cutting down some hollow bearing trees.

In Kangaroo Valley the Environment Group runs an annual Echidna Count for a week each year using iNaturalist, to track how they are faring, (they are elusive and difficult to monitor). Residents are asked to use iNaturalist to photograph echidnas whenever they see them in the valley during that week, and the counts are compared with previous counts. We are up to our fifth annual count project this year. Our first count is here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/kangaroo-valley-annual-echidna-count-2021  (Adelaide University also runs a continuous Echidna CSI project for Australia to collect observations: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/echidna-csi. The data from our local project also goes into that project.)

Local Kangaroo Valley wildlife rescue groups have been recording roadkill in a national project in iNaturalist for the past four years. (Warning, these photos are disturbing).  The national project is here:  https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/australia-s-untold-roadtoll-recording-roadkill-and-road-trauma, and filtered to Kangaroo Valley’s records are here:  https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=175827&project_id=australia-s-untold-roadtoll-recording-roadkill-and-road-trauma&verifiable=any

At Kangaroo Valley, we have recently started using iNaturalist to record wombats with mange in the mange project which is here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/sarcoptic-mange-in-australian-wildlife.

I am interested in slime moulds, and there are 546 species to peruse in iNaturalist, 239 of which are in Australia. Clearly other people like slime moulds as well because there are more than 390,000 observations of slime moulds in iNaturalist! https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=476

85. The Australasian fishes project is beautiful to browse https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/australasian-fishes

Other Interesting Projects

Audio Observations from around the world https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/audio-observations-from-around-the-world which has 12,550 species recorded, so if you want to hear a nightingale sing this is where to find it;

 

The Environment Recovery Project https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/environment-recovery-project  which has observations of the biodiversity recovery following the Black Summer bushfires in South East Australia;

Undescribed Australian Plants – phrase name species can be found at https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/undescribed-australian-plants-phrase-name-species-and-other-entities;

Dead Tree Detective https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/dead-tree-detective which feeds into the Atlas of Living Australia’s bio-collect project of the same name.

Learning to use iNaturalist

I am a techno clutz but I find it easy to use. There are short tutorials in the iNaturalist website, and there are also very good, more detailed tutorials here: