Recognition and completeness: two key metrics for judging the utility of citizen science data

Biodiversity citizen science data are being collected at unprecedented scales, and key for informing conservation research. Species-level typically provide the most valuable information, but recognition of specimens to species level from photographs varies among taxa. We examined a large dataset Australian photographic observations terrestrial invertebrates uploaded iNaturalist quantify across different also quantified proportion that have been iNaturalist. Across 1,013,171 covering 14,663 (17.8% completeness), 617,045 (60.9%) were recognized species. Dragonflies/damselflies butterflies best-recognized complete taxa, therefore represent best groups researchers managers intending use existing spatial temporal scales. The recruitment additional experts identify records, enhanced support accessible resources hard-to-identify will likely increase other