Introduction

The biodiversity crisis looms large (IPBES 2019), with numerous and varied causes behind species declines and extinctions (Rosenberg et al. 2019; Wagner et al. 2021). In addition to conserving and preserving the wild (and not so wild) spaces where species exist, the moment is now for widespread participatory action. Together with our students, we need to act, using available technology and tools. For most taxa, in most places, we do not know what is increasing or declining (Dirzo et al. 2014), and there are many impediments to understanding the changes happening in the natural world. Educators have a unique responsibility, and opportunity, to engage with students to advance knowledge of species and to collectively discover, monitor, and celebrate biodiversity. We need more biodiversity data, and we need it to be open and use international data standards (Morrison et al. 2017).

Enter iNaturalist, a global social platform where anyone can make, share, identify, discuss, and download observations of organisms (iNaturalist 2021). iNaturalist is not a traditional citizen science project with prescribed methodologies, nor is it primarily a data repository, but it can be those things; what iNaturalist is, is flexible. This flexibility makes it useful in undergraduate courses; as we demonstrate here, it is a tool for improving bioliteracy, biodiscovery, and data literacy (Figure 1).

iNaturalist is freely accessible as a website and as a mobile application, and is a joint initiative of the California Academy of Sciences and the National Geographic Society. Its primary goal is to “connect people to nature,” with the secondary goal to “generate scientifically valuable biodiversity data from these personal encounters” (iNaturalist 2021). Using iNaturalist is as simple as uploading a photo or sound recording and letting the community and/or computer vision suggest identifications. “Projects” on iNaturalist can aggregate and curate observations for particular purposes. Collection Projects automatically aggregate observations using a set of rules. Umbrella Projects group projects for comparison. Traditional Projects require users to manually add observations, with options for custom observation fields. Although collecting structured monitoring data is not the platform’s focus, students can make consistent observations using Traditional Projects with observation fields in a way suitable for simple ecological monitoring.

Undergraduate courses can make valuable contributions to biodiversity knowledge by using iNaturalist. We can train students who are open to learning from all sources of expertise, and who share their biological knowledge (building bioliteracy) in their communities. Bioliteracy can take many forms, from being aware of the ecosystem services biodiversity provides, to being able to identify local species by name and learning about their natural history (Janzen 2001). As students use iNaturalist, they can also contribute to biodiscovery (Gazdic and Groom 2019; Putman et al. 2021) and ecological monitoring (Forister et al. 2021). We define biodiscovery as the discovery of new species, interactions, and behaviors not previously recorded in a place and time period. Students learn and discover by contributing open, public, standards-compliant biodiversity knowledge and ecological data.

The study of natural history and the collection and curation of biological specimens is declining across higher education institutions (Tewksbury et al. 2014). For many students, learning about natural history is relegated to accessing off-campus networks, like natural history societies, where it is still celebrated. The decline of natural history in academia is not just concerning on its own, but is potentially limiting the ecological advances that might be made by our students (Able 2016; Barrows, Murphy-Mariscal, and Hernandez 2016). An action we can take now is advocating for students to discover natural history through tools like iNaturalist.

iNaturalist also provides an opportunity to focus on data literacy. Data literacy in biology is defined broadly to include basic numeracy, graphical interpretation, knowing which analytical tools to use, using data to answer questions, and clearly communicating results (Gibson and Mourad 2018). These skills were emphasized in Vision and Change (AAAS 2011), which included quantitative reasoning and modeling and simulation as core competencies. Student learning can be part of data collection, and science outcomes can be part of their learning. iNaturalist’s data are open and straightforward to access and download, and students can contribute to the data as they practice data literacy skills.

iNaturalist is useful in data literacy training because it is open, flexible, and authentic. Students gain skills collecting, managing, analyzing, and visualizing data. By querying iNaturalist, students develop skills related to identifying data appropriate to a question. The global species occurrence data allows students to make broad comparisons of different areas and to think about issues across scales, whereas customizable observation fields facilitate collection of more structured ecological data. iNaturalist data are authentic because they are real data vetted by a large community that can be used to answer real and novel questions (Moore et al. 2019), instead of demonstration datasets or simulated classroom datasets. There is also value to handling “messy” data; students’ data literacy can benefit from learning how to deal with missing values, non-significant results, or mis-identified outliers (Kjelvik and Schultheis 2019).

Case Studies: iNaturalist in Undergraduate Courses

We share our experiences with iNaturalist here, not as a how-to guide, but to illustrate the ways it can complement courses and to inspire other faculty to find a place for iNaturalist in their teaching. We bring the perspectives of a small United States (USA) liberal arts university (Brandeis University: Hitchcock), a small public New Zealand (NZ) university (Lincoln University: Sullivan), and a large USA multi-campus public university (Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York: O’Donnell). Supplemental Table 1 provides greater detail about our institutions and courses, along with project and course/assignment details (with links).

Data Methods for Assessing Bioliteracy and Biodiscovery

An important feature of iNaturalist is that all data are easily downloadable as CSV spreadsheets (and KML maps). If needed, more observation details can be obtained via iNaturalist’s API, which returns requests in JSON format. For example, the API can list who made identifications and comments for each observation, and when, while the CSV spreadsheet provides only the current best identification and the number of agreements and disagreements. We use the API here to make an assessment of activity on our class projects, while students in most of our courses use only the iNaturalist website or the CSV spreadsheets.

Note that the API is designed to aid developers in adding iNaturalist functionality to their apps. Although it can be used to extract rich data, it should not be used to scrape large amounts of data. For large datasets, iNaturalist provides a downloadable archive, updated weekly, of all Research Grade data (this is the dataset shared with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility [GBIF]). Non-captive/cultivated observations in iNaturalist become Research Grade when more than 2/3 of identifiers are in agreement at genus level or lower, and there are supporting photo(s) or audio (Ueda 2021).

We used the jsonlite (Ooms 2014) and iNatTools (Hanly 2019) packages for R (R Core Team 2021) to connect to the iNaturalist API and download relevant data (Ueda 2021). iNatTools was used to download each course project’s data, and jsonlite was used to download the taxa and number of observations made on iNaturalist within the bounds of our place-based projects, using the observations/species_counts and observations/histogram API calls. We used the 2.5% and 97.5% quantiles of each project’s observation latitudes and longitudes to define its boundaries, to exclude any distant outliers. We also repeated these calls for observations and taxa within a 50 km by 50 km square centered around each of our projects. This was done to assess how many students’ observations were important biodiscoveries, both within the project bounds and at this larger scale. We did not do this for our widely dispersed projects when students participated remotely during COVID-19 lockdown.

We excluded all course project observations made by faculty, teaching assistants, and associated experts (145 users), and the results section below reports the remaining observations. We counted the numbers of observations, photos, taxa contributed by our students, and calculated metrics of observation quality (e.g., how precisely could they be identified by the iNaturalist community) and students’ identification accuracy, to measure their gains in bioliteracy. We also compared how many observations each student made in our projects and made in total as a measure of bioliteracy change. Almost all students are new to iNaturalist when they join courses, and the observations they contributed to iNaturalist outside of our projects were (mostly) made after our courses began.

We compared students’ observations with all observations made in the project areas, and listed taxa that were first observed in the area by students, or are among ten or less observations of a taxon in the area, or are still the only observations of a taxon in this area. For all observations of taxa only observed in the area by our students, we manually checked identifications, where necessary by contacting relevant taxonomic experts. One observation (a fish) was identified to the wrong species, and another (a wasp) was identified to a plausible species but could not be identified with certainty from the photo. We highlight only vetted taxa as examples in the Biodiscovery section below, but we did not manually vet the hundreds of student observations of taxa that were in the ≤10 observations of each taxon in the area.

Results of iNaturalist Use

As of March 2021, 2,691 students in our course projects had made 66,249 observations of 5,278 taxa, including 3,269 taxa identified to the species level or below (Supplemental Table 3). These observations were supported by the students’ 103,235 photos and 68,604 identifications. Excluding the students, faculty, teaching assistants, and experts directly assisting with courses, 3,070 iNaturalist users made identifications on students’ observations, and 149 iNaturalist users made comments. In total, the iNaturalist community made 88,800 identifications on the students’ observations, and there were 6,783 comments discussing these observations.

Use of iNaturalist Results

Ecological monitoring

The Lincoln projects are examples of ecological monitoring in which students use our iNaturalist data (past and present) to graph species patterns and trends. Students use simple statistics to assess the significance of these trends. Although this workflow could be done using spreadsheets, iNaturalist has produced cleaner, more accurate, and more taxonomically diverse data.

The Lincoln campus is a combination of an area of campus buildings surrounded by research farms, and one question the students assess using iNaturalist is which species are most abundant in each of these habitats. Figure 2 shows the results for four birds. The swamp harrier, Circus approximans, and Australian magpie, Gymnorhina tibicen, are more abundant on the farm campus, and the NZ fantail, Rhipidura fuliginosa, and house sparrow, Passer domesticus, are more abundant on the built campus. Students are asked to speculate on what mechanisms might be driving these patterns.

Figure 2 

How the abundance of four bird species, as recorded with student five-minute bird counts entered into iNaturalist, differs in the built and farm areas of the campus of Lincoln University. Students enter counts of all the birds they see and hear in their five-minute surveys in observation fields on iNaturalist, which allows the birds not observed to be inferred. The swamp harrier (Circus approximans) and New Zealand (NZ) fantail (Rhipidura fuliginosa) are native birds, and the Australian magpie (Gymnorhina tibicen) and house sparrow (Passer domesticus) are introduced birds. Students create these graphs in a class lab.

Lincoln students also assess trends in species over time. For example, Figure 3 shows the trend in numbers of the NZ blue butterfly, Zizina oxleyi (Lycaenidae), in the Lincoln area, as revealed by annual 20-minute butterfly counts entered into iNaturalist. This species was rarely sighted in Lincoln before the 2015 demolition of an earthquake-damaged building and a 2017 felling of the surrounding trees. This created a 2-hectare wild, gravel area where the butterflies thrived. Construction has now begun on the replacement building and butterfly numbers have declined. We use trends like this to encourage students to consider what landscape changes benefit different species.

Figure 3 

The abundance of the New Zealand (NZ) blue, Zizina oxleyi, on Lincoln Universitys campus since 2014, as revealed by student 20-minute butterfly counts. These were entered into an iNaturalist project that included observation fields for the maximum and minimum counts; the time surveying, in minutes; and whether or not the observer searched for all butterflies. The increase in butterflies corresponded with the clearance of a large building, which created a 2-hectare wild area from late 2017 to the end of 2020. The fitted line is from a quadratic quasipoisson generalized linear model.

Discussion

As our case studies demonstrate, iNaturalist’s flexibility is a strength for both students and faculty. Students engage differently depending on the course, the learning goals, and the interests, skills, and focus of the faculty. Yes, students may make mistakes in the process, but with a course-based introduction, scaffolded assignments and structured feedback, students learn from those mistakes and engage in practices to make observations that are scientifically relevant. Instructors need to take care that grading practices, where implemented, do not create perverse incentives for students to behave poorly on iNaturalist (e.g., falsify observations, or purposefully misidentify observations). Key to success is the engagement of faculty alongside students coupled with consistent and detailed feedback to ensure that students contribute positively to the iNaturalist community. Feedback both within and outside of the platform, along with open discussions of both high- and low-quality observations, are practices that help support ethical behavior of students. We do not want our students to be creating inappropriate observations or identifications just for the sake of a grade. Assessments that focus on making verifiable, information-rich observations (e.g., taking good photos or having complete observation fields) versus those that focus on absolute numbers of observations or identifications help to limit bad behavior.

iNaturalist supports improvements in student bioliteracy through direct observation and students’ use of the community’s comments and identifications. In the past, these natural history skills would have developed as students created specimen collections. Although specimen collections are now rare in undergraduate biology courses, iNaturalist can facilitate this learning through the curation of a digital collection.

Our analysis of students’ contributions via iNaturalist highlights only Research Grade observations, but it is important to note that all observations have the potential to be useful for research, with the right checks and caveats (Mugford et al. 2021). Just as there are plenty of non–Research Grade observations that are appropriate for use in research, Research Grade observations also should be checked before using them for research.

For each of us, finding the right fit for our students grew out of our own engagement on the platform, and here we’ve shared our collective 25 years of experience with students in iNaturalist. It is important for faculty to engage on the platform, demonstrating how to provide feedback to others (giving as well as receiving), and discussing at frequent intervals what makes good observations. Students see us continuing to advance our own bioliteracy (making mistakes along the way) as a model of how to be curious and to engage in biodiscovery as professionals in an open and public way (e.g., @hitchco, @jon_sullivan, @klodonnell). The more we use iNaturalist, the more we learn as faculty about how it can support our students. Improvements to iNaturalist, such as the introduction of Collection Projects, more filters, observation fields, audio recording, annotations, and the API, have facilitated easier integration over the years.

The responses from students have been overwhelmingly positive. Students report iNaturalist “is great for mental health” because it gets them outdoors. They mention the benefits of community, noting it is “nice to see the class working together to learn about new species and help identify each other’s observations.” They also become aware of their growing appreciation of the natural world: “I did not think that the experience would affect me, but I discovered on the following Monday how false that was [….] While I was waiting for the train to come, I looked across from me and noticed for the first time that there were about 5 different types of trees in that one spot. Previously, I had just saw them all as uninteresting trees.”

As our collective work demonstrates, students are making important contributions to biodiversity knowledge. Making discoveries on iNaturalist is exciting, from being the first to observe a species, to interacting with professional researchers who value these contributions, to celebrating discoveries with other enthusiasts. Anyone observing cannot help but be inspired by the knowledge that an observation made right here, right now, helps to form the foundation of ecological monitoring (Forister et al. 2021). In addition, strategic planning can create baseline species lists for green spaces and inspire professional research. For example, the 2015 Macaulay BioBlitz established an initial species list for the newly established Freshkills Park, formerly the world’s largest landfill, and led to an additional survey of lichen diversity there (Allen and Howe 2016), and the 2013 Macaulay BioBlitz inspired the two-year survey of the spontaneous flora of Central Park (Atha et al. 2020).

There is a pressing need to document the state of biodiversity so that future historical ecologists have a baseline for comparison (Morrison et al. 2017). Ecology is built on knowledge of organisms and yet very little is documented about most of them (Greene 2005). The use of iNaturalist in undergraduate courses helps address these needs, through species occurrence records and (optionally) simple ecological monitoring. Just documenting where species are found allows future ecologists to ask how many of these species remain at these locations. We see great potential for much more widespread, and coordinated, use of iNaturalist in undergraduate courses globally.

Conclusions

Students benefit from iNaturalist use by becoming part of a public online community of nature enthusiasts. The openness of iNaturalist encourages students to do good work because their work is publicly visible and makes a real and permanent contribution to global biodiversity knowledge as they become citizen scientists. Students’ iNaturalist use also provides them with a means to observe and identify species after their courses have ended. For students planning an environmental research career, their iNaturalist profile also provides a public demonstration of their biological skills.

iNaturalist has the flexibility to be a tool that students keep after they complete their degree. It is the tool that, as a professional, they can use to identify species and collect data, and it is the place where they can hang out to have fun observing the natural world.

Together we have the opportunity to collectively engage alongside our students on iNaturalist, increase our collective bioliteracy, and participate in biodiscovery and ecological monitoring in an open and transparent way. We have the opportunity to inspire the next generation of bioliterate, biocurious, and data-literate citizens, and the next generation of scientists fluent in open collaborative research and learning. Most importantly, by using iNaturalist in our courses, we are taking action to help document and monitor biodiversity at this critical time, while making space for natural history exploration in higher education.

Data Accessibility Statements

All data are available via iNaturalist (Ueda 2021, iNaturalist.org data to 30 March 2021).

Supplementary files

The supplementary files for this article can be found as follows: