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Will Brisbane Overthrow Carnamah in this Year’s Great Aussie BioQuest?
7 July, 2022, Sydney, Australia
Although leading the pack after the first round of competition, Brisbane will have their work cut out for them if they hope to win this year’s sixth annual Great Aussie BioQuest.
The Great Aussie BioQuest is a citizen science competition where participants use their mobile phones to upload photos of insects, birds, spiders, reptiles, mushrooms - basically any wild plant or animal they can find — as they compete to help map their local biodiversity for scientific research and conservation.
In previous years, the BioQuest was a state-vs-state competition held during National Science Week in August. But last year, with over 500 councils participating, the BioQuest became a nationwide council-vs-council competition. The event was also extended throughout August, with Carnamah in Western Australia taking the title in 2021 (followed by Katherine and Coorow).
This year, for the first time, the BioQuest is held across two rounds: April and August. Brisbane scored highest in the April round, followed by Kangaroo Island and the Sunshine Coast. But August, which is expected to be the most active month ever, will likely see even higher scores. “Pretty much any council can win the title this year,” says Andrew Robinson, Chair of the Australia-based Earth Guardians, which runs the BioQuest each year. “My money’s on places like Indigo, Cassowary Coast, Port Adelaide, the Shire of Wandering. In January, for example, the remote shire of Nannup was beating everyone. Fact is, there are amazing nature observers across the country, busy tracking the local wildlife in places you’d never expect.”
Using the free QuestaGame mobile app, players receive an expert identification, along with a score, for every sighting they submit. Players can also earn bonus points for identifying the sightings themselves. The sightings data is shared with the Atlas of Living Australia and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, where researchers use it to get a better picture of Australia’s biodiversity.
“A lot of people think a place like Brisbane, a big city with more biodiversity, will naturally score higher,” says Robinson. “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.”
“Even a small backyard will have a multitude of small invertebrates - insects, spiders, etc - for you to photograph,” explains Dr. Penelope Mills of the University of Queensland. “No backyard? No worries. Lights will attract moths and other nocturnal invertebrates at night.”
QuestaGame has generated over 3.5 million species submissions and expert identifications, and the data have been cited in over 700 scientific papers. Players regularly find species yet to be described by Western Science, or which represent potential biosecurity threats. There are even cases of school kids co-authoring scientific papers based on what they discover playing QuestaGame.
Councils with schools that have begun adopting QuestaGame as part of their education curriculum are also expected to do well this year. Many schools will be participating in a P-12 BioQuest competition that runs in August as well (see QuestaSchools.com). Their activity will also count toward their council’s score in the Great Aussie BioQuest.
“Places like Coffs Harbour, regional areas around Perth, and the Cairns Regional Council have some fantastic school programs,” says Robinson. “Those kids could end up propelling their council to victory.”
Round two runs 1-31 August, including National Science Week. It is free to play. No registration is necessary. Just start playing the app and the points you accrue will count toward your council’s BioQuest score.
