Citizen Science
What is citizen science?
Citizen or people powered science involves everyday people recording and sharing observations about the world around them. This information helps contribute to our understanding of the environment and informs conservation actions. Citizen science plays a crucial role in gathering data and long-term monitoring of sites and species. Anyone can get involved, with no qualifications required. Check out some opportunities in the invertebrate space below.
Ways to get involved in invertebrate citizen science
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Sea Slug Census
The Victorian National Parks Association needs help to monitor these butterflies of the ocean.
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Australian Citizen Science Association
Discover lots of resources and use the project finder to locate citizen science projects near you!
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Moth Tracker
The Zoos Victoria Moth Tracker is a place to record your Bogong Moth sightings to help them and critically endangered Mountain Pygmy-possums. If you’re interested in moths National Moth Week is also a great time to find events near you.
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Atlas of Living Australia
You can volunteer with ALA to help them transcribe and capture data from their specimen labels and archives so they are digitally accessible. They also developed BioCollect - an advanced, but simple-to-use data collection tool for collecting field data.
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Beautiful Butterflies
If you like butterflies there are lots of citizen science projects to get involved in, including Counting Coppers and Brisbane’s Big Butterfly Count. You can also upload sightings to the Butterflies Australia database.
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Protecting Pollinators
Our pollinators provide a vital service in our ecosystems. Join the Wild Pollinator Count or the Wheen Bee Foundation’s Australian Pollinator Count to help contribute to their protection.
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Christmas Beetle Count
Our very own Christmas Beetle Count is helping to gather data on these iconic beetles to help ensure their protection. We encourage members of the public to upload their sightings to iNaturalist.
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Great Southern Bioblitz
The Great Southern BioBlitz is an international period of intense biological surveying in an attempt to record all the living species within several designated areas across the Southern Hemisphere in Spring - including bugs!
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Backyard Bush Blitz
Discover some amazing plants and animals living in your own backyard, learn to identify them with the help of Bush Blitz scientists and contribute valuable data about insects (and other species) - all online and in your own backyard. Check out the videos and factsheets on their website.
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Counting Crayfish
Blue Mountains City Council runs annual crayfish surveys in four areas and waterbug surveys at more than sixty sites, but they are unable to conduct formal surveys in every stream - that's where you come in!
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Helping our Reefs
The Great Reef Census is a large, global citizen science project and collects tens of thousands of images from the Great Barrier Reef each year. They need people to help identify what type of coral, and how much of it, they can see on these images. There's also Reef Watch in South Australia.