Caption: Death cap mushrooms (Amanita phalloides) Credit: Jolanda Aalbers/Shutterstock [downloaded from https://theconversation.com/what-is-inaturalist-the-citizen-science-app-playing-an-unlikely-role-in-erin-pattersons-mushroom-murder-trial-255714]

The woman’s trial is still ongoing and my interest is in the citizen science aspect of it all. Here’s a precis of the murder trial and a discussion of iNaturalist from a May 2, 2025 essay by Caitlyn Forster, associate lecturer, University of Sydney, and Melissa Humphries, senior lecturer, University of Adelaide, for The Conversation, Note: Links have been removed,

The world has been gripped by the case of Australian woman Erin Patterson, who was charged with the murder of three people after allegedly serving them a lunch of beef wellington containing poisonous death cap mushrooms (Amanita phalloides).

A new element of the sensational story emerged in court this week, when prosecutors reportedly alleged Patterson used iNaturalist to locate and visit places where death cap mushrooms were known to grow.

So what exactly is iNaturalist? And how is this 17-year-old citizen science project being used to better understand our world?

More than 240 million observations worldwide

iNaturalist is an app that allows users to take photos of plants, fungi, animals and any piece of nature. The photos are uploaded, and identified using a combination of crowd-sourcing and artificial intelligence.

When a user uploads an image, they can also choose to make the location public, so others can see where it was found. iNaturalist’s database holds more than 240 million observations wordlwide. More than 10.6 million of these are in Australia.

All of this data is extremely important for scientists to understand the ecology of different species. iNaturalist has played a key role in the discovery of new species as well as sightings of species that have previously not been seen for decades.

…

Finding the unusual

Real people usually collect images for iNaturalist as part of their everyday life, rather than systematically as part of their job. That means there are patterns to the data that is collected.

Observations tend to be recorded on weekends and in good weather, and to involve life forms people find strange, unusual or interesting.

For example, at the time of writing, iNaturalist had recorded 1,382 sightings of domestic cats in Australia, compared with 29,660 koalas. But cataloguing the rare and wonderful can be useful.

…

In 2011, iNaturalist added more features to protect geoprivacy – which allows locations of observations to be obscured. Rare and exciting pets, and collectable insects could be found by looking at location data on iNaturalist.

There is previous evidence this has occurred. Nowadays, species of concern for poaching automatically have their locations obscured, preventing them from being illegally poached or collected. This can also be helpful to prevent people crowding popular endangered animals when they have been sighted.

Typically, anything listed as endangered will automatically have an obscured location on iNaturalist.

…

Observing nature has huge benefits to understanding our natural world. But these observations do collect a lot of personal data in terms of where and when the observation occurred.

Although iNaturalist doesn’t sell users’ information, and users can obscure their precise location, the pictures a person shares can still contain enough information to figure out where they are.

This could be used for forensic intelligence to locate plants and animals of interest, and to place people with them at the time the photo was taken.

If you’re lucky enough to see a rare or threatened species, consider taking a photo that has little background information that can give away the precise details of the locations, particularly when observing immobile organisms like such as plants and fungi.

…

iNaturalist is a fantastic resource for observing nature. More data points to understand where plants, animals, and mushrooms can be found is vital for understanding their ecology, and potentially conserving species.

It also has huge ramifications for biosecurity, forensics, and even understanding movements that may have occurred during an alleged crime. So it’s really worth getting out in nature and taking photos of interesting things you see!

For anyone curious about the trial, Ms. Patterson is currently testifying on her own behalf, there’s the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) “Erin Patterson Mushroom Murder Trial” blog with live updates or the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) “Deadly mushroom cook calculated fatal dose on kitchen scales, prosecution alleges” live blog.

I have few comments, it’s well known that some varieties of mushrooms can be fatal and they have been inadvertently or purposefully implicated in more than one death. It’s up to a jury to decide Ms. Patterson’s guilt or innocence and I imagine the folks at iNaturalist are making some adjustments to what geolocation information is being shared on their site.

Getting back to citizen science and iNaturalist, there’s this from their homepage, Note: A link has been removed,

Contribute to Science

Every observation can contribute to biodiversity science, from the rarest butterfly to the most common backyard weed. We share your findings with scientific data repositories like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility to help scientists find and use your data. All you have to do is observe.

On that note, let’s contribute to science.