[Leps-l] PLOS Biology paper encouraging expert contribution to iNaturalist

[Mike Quinn]

Greetings,

interesting short paper published yesterday in PLOS Biology encouraging
experts to contribute identifications to iNaturalist.

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In recent decades, there has been a massive increase in available
biodiversity data—there are currently >2.1 billion species occurrence
records in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, representing a
12-fold increase since 2007 [2
<https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001843#pbio.3001843.ref002>].
This rise in biodiversity data is due in part to the growing popularity of
citizen, or community-based, science.

One of the most globally successful platforms is iNaturalist (
www.inaturalist.org; [3
<https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001843#pbio.3001843.ref003>])—a
multitaxa platform and joint initiative of the California Academy of
Sciences and the National Geographic Society. <snip> While the quantity of
data and contributors continue to increase on iNaturalist, one bottleneck
to fully realizing the potential of these data for scientific research is
the dearth of participants with reasonable expertise (i.e., someone with
the skills and ability to make informed identifications)—hereafter
“identifiers”—actively participating in the community. The iNaturalist
community—as of January 2022—consists of 2.5 million users, 92% of whom
only observe, <1% of whom have only made identifications, and 7% of whom
both observe and identify. More recruitment of identifiers is clearly
needed. Here, we provide our collective perspective on 7 reasons to
contribute to iNaturalist as an identifier (Box 1
<https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001843#pbio.3001843.box001>
).
Callaghan CT, Mesaglio T, Ascher JS, Brooks TM, Cabras AA, Chandler M, et
al. (2022) The benefits of contributing to the citizen science platform
iNaturalist as an identifier. PLoS Biol 20(11): e3001843.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001843

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Mike Quinn, Austin
________________
Texas Entomology
http://texasento.net
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