In this article featured on “The Long Now Foundation” website, Michael Moore, Assistant Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, CU Denver, talked about his first experience finding data for his research on the iNaturalist app -
Not surprisingly, scientists have already published more than 2,800 studies citing iNaturalist data. One of them is Michael Moore, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver. In 02019, he was pondering the potential impacts of rising temperatures on the evolution of wing coloration in dragonflies when his partner introduced him to iNaturalist. “I logged on and saw that at that time, there were around 14,000 observations of just one of the species of dragonfly that I wanted to study. I realized very quickly I logged on and saw that at that time, there were around 14,000 observations of just one of the species of dragonfly that I wanted to study. I realized very quickly that I could essentially answer this question using the data that was already there.”
In 02021, Moore and his colleagues published a paper showing that over just 17 years, males of several species of dragonflies have evolved less breeding coloration on their wings in regions with hotter climates—a change that affects their breeding success and internal temperature regulation. The principal evidence was citizen science observations from GBIF and iNaturalist. “Thanks to this data, we’re able to literally watch evolution take place at a grand scale,” says Moore, who last year gave a keynote presentation entitled “How citizen science is super-charging the study of evolutionary adaptation” at the American Philosophical Society.