The Great Aussie BioQuest is a citizen science competition where participants use their mobile phones to upload photos of insects, birds, spiders, reptiles, fungi - basically any wild plant or animal they can find — as they compete to help map their local biodiversity for scientific research and conservation.
"A lot of people think a place like Brisbane, a big city with more biodiversity, will naturally score higher," says Andrew Robinson, Chair of the Australia-based Earth Guardians, which runs the BioQuest each year. "But the scoring system is normalised by population and scaled according to the 'scientific value' of each find, so regional areas with less biodiversity, and lower populations will often score higher per submission."
BioQuest was originally a state-vs-state competition held during National Science Week in August. In 2021, with over 500 councils participating, BioQuest became a nationwide council-vs-council competition. This year, the BioQuest is held across two rounds: April and August.
Round 2 runs from 1 - 30 August as part of National Science Week. It is free to play. No registration is necessary:
- Participants download the free mobile app, QuestaGame, and submit photographs of wildlife living around them during the competition period.
- Experts from various local indigenous/conservation/landcare/ranger groups verify submissions and provide feedback. Each submission is allocated a score depending on the rarity of spotting this species in relation to its location and time of the year.
- At the challenge's conclusion, scores will be tallied, and players with the highest scores in various categories will be declared champions.
The sightings data is shared with the Atlas of Living Australia and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, where researchers use it to better understand Australia's biodiversity.
