Hi everyone,
I would like to share a recent preprint from an ongoing project exploring plant–pollinator interactions in Quito, Ecuador using iNaturalist observations and citizen science data.
The study focuses on hymenopteran pollinators (bees and wasps) and examines how citizen science records can help document ecological interactions and urban biodiversity in a region where quantitative pollination studies remain limited.
This is a preprint, meaning the manuscript has been made publicly available before formal peer review while it is being evaluated by a scientific journal.
Preprint available here:
https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.21.726748
This project started in 2022 and has been heavily supported by the iNaturalist community through observations and identifications. The repository, code, and datasets are also openly available.
One of the most interesting aspects of the project has been seeing how valuable opportunistic observations can become when many contributors collectively document ecological interactions over time.
Thank you to everyone contributing observations and identifications on iNaturalist — projects like this would not be possible without the community.