With our small size and population, Aotearoa New Zealand doesn’t often top global charts. However, in 2024, a discovery from our country became the most popular observation on the iNaturalist platform, outshining over 50 million other observations made that year! Te Papa Scientist Lara Shepherd discusses a few of New Zealand’s most notable iNaturalist findings of the last year.
iNaturalist, a citizen science platform, connects people with their local biodiversity while generating valuable data for scientists. Each year, iNaturalist releases a Year in Review summarising the year’s discoveries. In 2024, 1.3 million people made a collective 50 million observations globally – nearly 10 million more than the previous year! The biggest spike in observations occurred during the City Nature Challenge when nearly 700 cities participated.
The Frosted Phoenix rises from the dead straight to the top of iNaturalist
One of the most anticipated categories in the ‘Year in Review’ is the most popular observations – those with the most comments and ‘faves’. This year, an observation from New Zealand took the crown! The star of the show was a moth thought to be extinct – the Frosted Phoenix (Titanomis sisyrota). The first-ever photo of a living specimen was taken by a Swedish tourist on Stewart Island in March.
Moth expert Dr Robert Hoare’s comment on the observation gives important context on the discovery:
This is the greatest Lepidoptera find in the history of iNaturalistNZ.
No other living soul has seen this moth, the Holy Grail of NZ moths. It was last seen in 1959 and at one time was believed extinct, but I always thought there was hope. The enigma is enhanced by the fact that the family placement of the moth is unknown, but it may belong somewhere in the region of Cossidae.
Truly astonishing! Never recorded from Stewart Island before, but there is a 1900 specimen from Haldane, Southland not so far away. This is the 11th individual ever seen.
The Frosted Phoenix is one of the contestants in the 2025 New Zealand Bug of the Year competition. You can vote for it here.
A huge loss to the New Zealand iNaturalist community
The most popular iNaturalist observations are usually unexpected discoveries, such as the Frosted Phoenix, or exceptional photographs. However, the second most popular observation from New Zealand in 2024 has a much sadder story; it was the last observation posted by Stephen Thorpe, who was fatally stabbed in Auckland in August. Stephen was a well-known entomologist in the iNaturalist community identifying over 90,000 observations for others. Read more about Stephen’s contributions to iNaturalist and entomology here. Stephen also identified more than 7,000 specimens in Te Papa’s collections.
A secretive bird finally captured on film
The third most popular New Zealand observation is of a highly secretive bird found only on the remote subantarctic Auckland Islands. The Auckland Island rail (Lewinia muelleri) is a small bird which is more often heard than seen. Although photos exist of this species in captivity it was only first captured on camera in the wild last February when a chick was recorded with a trail camera.
Te Papa has a number of skins and the only known eggs of the Auckland Island rail in its bird collection. The eggs were in a nest that was abandoned five days after they were found.
2025 could be the year of your big discovery!
Now is a great time to start using iNaturalist – it might be you that makes the most-popular observation in 2025!
Read instructions for how to make observations with iNaturalist.
Further reading
2023’s most popular iNaturalist observations from New Zealand:
