3 million creepy crawlies
Here in Aotearoa, and on Afternoons in fact, we love our critters. And that passion for insects, bugs and plants is backed up by the fact that we've logged nearly three million observations on the citizen science platform iNaturalist.. The website, which has been running in New Zealand since 2012, brings together curious members of the public with expert identifiers to track populations of thousands of species. This has led to new sightings of native species, and important discoveries of invasive species. Jon Sullivan is an ecologist based at Lincoln University and is one of the founders of iNaturalist.