iNaturalist

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. iNaturalist may be accessed via its website or from its mobile applications. iNaturalist includes an automated species identification tool, and users further assist each other in identifying organisms from photographs. As of 24 February 2024, 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.

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. 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. It is the primary application for crowd-sourced biodiversity data in places such as Mexico, southern Africa, and Australia, and the project has been called "a standard-bearer for natural history mobile applications." Most of iNaturalist's software is open source. Scientists have published more than 4,000 papers drawn from iNaturalist data sets and observations, including descriptions of species new to science and rediscoveries of species so rarely seen they were feared extinct.