Crowdsourcing natural history with iNaturalist

Every ecologist should be using iNaturalist to turn photos of biodiversity into useful data and explore what others have found. Just think: thousands of people each month, all over the world, documenting biological phenomena. As a result, we are learning about new behaviors, phenological patterns, species interactions, and more. Since 2017, it also incorporates artificial intelligence to suggest identifications based on visual similarity, which are confirmed or corrected by people like you. As iNaturalist grows, so does its ability to surpass conventional methods of sharing natural history—it’s a photo album, life list, field guide, and social network in one.