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Short Abstract

Integrating occurrence records from social media can help reduce biodiversity data gaps, enhance mapping of invasive species, and improve conservation assessments.

Abstract

Citizen science plays a crucial role in helping monitor biodiversity and inform conservation. With the widespread use of smartphones, many people share biodiversity information on social media, but this information is still not widely used in conservation. We collated species distribution records from Facebook and Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), grouped them into GBIF-only and combined GBIF and Facebook data. In my presentation, I will discuss how data integration from Facebook can reduce the biodiversity data shortfall, enhance invasive species distribution, improve the range dynamics of a highly range-shifting butterfly, and improve conservation assessments. These findings underscore the value of integrating social media data to fill biodiversity knowledge gaps, track species redistributions, and support spatial planning under the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. A key research priority now is the development of mechanisms for extracting and interpreting social media biodiversity data.