Citizen science initiatives and the data they produce are increasingly common in ecology, conservation and biodiversity monitoring. Although the quality of citizen science data has historically been questioned, biases can be detected and corrected for, allowing these data to become comparable in quality to professionally collected data. Consequently, citizen science is increasingly being integrated with professional science, allowing the collection of data at unprecedented spatial and temporal scales. iNaturalist is one of the most popular biodiversity citizen science platforms globally, with more than 1.4 million users having contributed over 54 million observations. Australia is the top contributing nation in the southern hemisphere, and in the top four contributing nations globally, with over 1.6 million observations of over 36 000 identified species contributed by almost 27 000 users. Despite the platform’s success, there are few holistic syntheses of contributions to iNaturalist, especially for Australia. Here, we outline the history of iNaturalist from an Australian perspective, and summarise, taxonomically, temporally and spatially, Australian biodiversity data contributed to the platform. We conclude by discussing important future directions to maximise the usefulness of these data for ecological research, conservation and policy.

公民科学计划及其产生的数据在生态，保护和生物多样性监测中越来越普遍。尽管一直以来都对公民科学数据的质量提出质疑，但可以发现并纠正偏差，使这些数据在质量上可以与专业收集的数据相提并论。因此，公民科学与专业科学的融合越来越多，从而可以空前的时空尺度收集数据。iNaturalist是全球最受欢迎的生物多样性公民科学平台之一，拥有140万用户，贡献了超过5400万观测值。澳大利亚是南半球贡献最大的国家，在全球贡献最大的四个国家中，超过1个。大约27,000个用户贡献了对36,000种已识别物种的600万观察结果。尽管该平台取得了成功，但对iNaturalist所做的贡献却鲜为人知，尤其是在澳大利亚。在这里，我们从澳大利亚的角度概述了iNaturalist的历史，并从分类，时间和空间上总结了该平台的澳大利亚生物多样性数据。最后，我们讨论了重要的未来方向，以最大程度地利用这些数据对生态研究，保护和政策的利用。澳大利亚生物多样性数据为该平台做出了贡献。最后，我们讨论了重要的未来方向，以最大程度地利用这些数据对生态研究，保护和政策的利用。澳大利亚生物多样性数据为该平台做出了贡献。最后，我们讨论了重要的未来方向，以最大程度地利用这些数据对生态研究，保护和政策的利用。