2023-06-05 05:46:52
With 5.5 million different observations of plants, animals, and fungi, a record of more than 45,000 species, and the participation of more than 138,000 users, Naturalista, the Mexican social network for citizen science, reaches its tenth anniversary.
A decade ago the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (Conabio) became the first partner of a great initiative that was born in California, the iNaturalist network.
Conabio adopted and adapted the platform to the information from Mexico, including municipalities, protected areas, lists of native, endemic, and exotic species, common names in Spanish and indigenous languages.
In just ten years, this nature social network became the largest citizen science initiative in Mexico. “In 2013 it caught the attention of Conabio and was brought to Mexico as a Mexican version; that is, the name is translated: instead of being an iNaturalist, he arrives as a Naturalist in the country. And not only that: this national touch is also beginning to be given, information about the species in Mexico with common names, endemic species and others begins to be entered, and a network of curators and tutors is formed that helps the correct functioning of the platform”, explains Diego Barrales Alcalá, collaborator of the General Directorate of Science Communication of Conabio, in an interview.
How does it work?
Naturalista is a digital platform with a free mobile application. People can upload photos of mushrooms, plants and animals, with date and location. Terrestrial and marine species, small and large, are included. Images are automatically identified and reviewed by international network participants and curators.
“You can also upload audio. For example, from songs of birds or frogs. If there is someone who knows about bird calls and comes across my recording, can you suggest an ID and tell me that it was a red cardinal. That way I get this feedback from specialized people, I get to know more about the species in the area; but not only that: when I generate this type of records, they are incorporated into the National Biodiversity Training System managed by Conabio and are precisely part of the information on the biological wealth of our country”, explains Barrales.
Various sectors of society participate in the network: students, rural communities, specialists in various biological disciplines, amateurs and anyone interested in learning about the nature that surrounds them. In this social network there is interaction between users, as well as internal conversations.
The observations are gathered in projects, which can go from a small garden or a median in the city, going through municipalities, protected areas, states or countries. In addition, the species, once identified, are automatically labeled as native or introduced to the country (exotic) and with their respective conservation status.
Carlos Galindo Leal, general director of Science Communication at Conabio, indicates that the entire team that makes up Naturalista in Mexico reaches this tenth anniversary very happy with these 5.5 million records.
“After ten years we achieved around 140,000 participants and almost 45,000 Mexican species have been photographed. It has been an impressive advance with these more than five million photographs ”, he indicates.
He adds that Naturalista is one of the easiest ways to find out what is in any municipality in Mexico, in any state, natural protected area or urban park. “You just have to open the application on your phone and you already have a large number of species. For example, imagine that in Mexico City we have documented more than nine thousand species of plants, animals and wild fungi. It’s really amazing”.
Relevance
Naturalista information is used for nature conservation and restoration projects, improvement of parks and gardens, identification of agricultural and forest pests, disease vectors (for example, the besucona bug, vector of Chagas disease), species in risk and as an educational tool to promote knowledge of the species that inhabit Mexico and the world.
“If we do not know the biodiversity, the biological wealth of our country, we will care little what happens to it, we will care little if forests disappear, that the illegal hunting of animals continues, that the illegal extraction of plants continues; because we do not know, we do not know of this wealth. So, the moment that as citizens we discover this richness, we become aware that we are guardians of it”, says Barrales.
Thanks to the observations and reports that have been generated through Naturalista, today it is known that Veracruz, Oaxaca, and Jalisco have the largest number of flora and fauna species, with almost 14,000 registered species. As for participants, Mexico City, the State of Mexico and Quintana Roo lead the way with over 13,000 naturalists.
“What comes for this social network of nature is to continue with the network of tutors and curators so that information can be facilitated and integrated within society in a more agile way. It also seeks to take this platform to all sectors, especially education, where it has been seen that it can have very good results because they are practically seedbeds with young people. Bringing them Naturalista can help them to be more sensitive to their surroundings”, she explains.
It also seeks, he adds, that it can be a tool for use by the authorities; that is to say, that they turn to see the platform as a good place from which they can obtain the necessary information to design environmental public policies.
interconnected
Parallel to Naturalista, Conabio developed the Enciclovida platform (Enciclovida.mx), which contains information from the National Biodiversity System (SNIB) and comes from hundreds of scientific collections with millions of records of localities of the species in Mexico.
Enciclovida is also connected to information from two citizen science platforms: AverAves and Naturalista, and from other platforms (Tropicos from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Macaulay Library from Cornell University, the red list of the International Union for the Conservation of nature, IUCNand Wikipedia in Spanish, for example) that provide photographs, videos, sounds, descriptions, scientific names and common names, maps, etc.
“Naturalista and Enciclovida are connected. The first is participatory; contributes citizen science records to the second; the second is for consultation and contributes species descriptions to the first. I call them the perfect combo. In this sense, I invite the entire population to use and enjoy them, since they are for all those who want to know a little more about their natural environment”, concludes Galindo Leal.
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