Tawatha T. Elguero

Scientific illustration and visual communication.

iNaturalist

#citizenscience
iNaturalist
Sea campion (Silene uniflora) found in the southern highlands of Iceland. 2024. ©Tawatha T. Elguero

iNaturalist is a global social network and citizen science platform that connects people to nature by allowing them to record and share observations of living organisms.

I’ve been part of the iNaturalist community since 2018. It has helped me understand the biodiversity around me and has enriched every hike I’ve taken. It makes the invisible visible. It’s one of my favourite apps.

Some of my observations:

[ Blog post in progress, 30th May, '26 ]


The Value of Citizen Science

[In progress]

I recently read about a citizen scientist who rediscovered a South African moth that had been lost to science for more than 150 years. Stories like this show how citizen scientists can make meaningful contributions by helping document biodiversity and reveal species that might otherwise remain overlooked.

Citizen science rediscovers rare South African moth
A strikingly handsome emerald-green moth, lost to science for nearly one-and-a-half centuries, has been rediscovered in South Africa by citizen scientists who posted photographs of it online. The moth, Drepanogynis insciata, whose body and wing margins look as though they’ve been stained with red wine, was thought to be extinct. The species hadn’t been recorded […]

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