Biodiversity monitoring programs and citizen science data remain heavily biased toward the Global North. Especially in megadiverse countries with limited biodiversity records, incorporating social media data can help address existing data gaps. However, whether such data can significantly improve our understanding of range‐shifting species is still unknown. We tested whether social media data improved our knowledge of the rang...

The expanding use of community science platforms has led to an exponential increase in biodiversity data in global repositories. Yet, understanding of species distributions remains patchy. Biodiversity data from social media can potentially reduce the global biodiversity knowledge gap. However, practical guidelines and standardized methods for harvesting such data are nonexistent. Following data privacy and protection safeguar...

Citizen science plays a crucial role in helping monitor biodiversity and inform conservation. With the widespread use of smartphones, many people share biodiversity information on social media, but this information is still not widely used in conservation. Focusing on Bangladesh, a tropical megadiverse and mega‐populated country, we examined the importance of social media records in conservation decision‐making. We collated sp...

Ongoing loss of biological diversity is primarily the result of unsustainable human behavior. Thus, the long‐term success of biodiversity conservation depends on a thorough understanding of human–nature interactions. Such interactions are ubiquitous but vary greatly in time and space and are difficult to monitor efficiently at large spatial scales. However, the Information Age also provides new opportunities to better understa...

Social media data are being increasingly used in conservation science to study human–nature interactions. User‐generated content, such as images, video, text, and audio, and the associated metadata can be used to assess such interactions. A number of social media platforms provide free access to user‐generated social media content. However, similar to any research involving people, scientific investigations based on social med...

The prosperity and well‐being of human societies relies on healthy ecosystems and the services they provide. However, the biodiversity crisis is undermining ecosystems services and functions. Vultures are among the most imperiled taxonomic groups on Earth, yet they have a fundamental ecosystem function. These obligate scavengers rapidly consume large amounts of carrion and human waste, a service that may aid in both disease pr...

Article impact statement : Machine learning can be used to automatically monitor and assess illegal wildlife trade on social media platforms.

Between 1990 and 2007, 15 southern white ( Ceratotherium simum simum ) and black ( Diceros bicornis ) rhinoceroses on average were killed illegally every year in South Africa. Since 2007 illegal killing of southern white rhinoceros for their horn has escalated to >950 individuals/year in 2013. We conducted an ecological–economic analysis to determine whether a legal trade in southern white rhinoceros horn could facilitate rhin...

The allocation of land to biological diversity conservation competes with other land uses and the needs of society for development, food, and extraction of natural resources. Trade‐offs between biological diversity conservation and alternative land uses are unavoidable, given the realities of limited conservation resources and the competing demands of society. We developed a conservation‐planning assessment for the South Afric...