2024: A Year of Growth and Impact
eButterfly End-of-Year Report: 2024
Prepared by Rodrigo Solis, Human Network and Data Coordinator
Reflecting on a Transformative Year: eButterfly’s 2024 Journey
As 2024 comes to an end, we at eButterfly are brimming with pride over what has been a groundbreaking year. Our mission to empower community scientists, researchers, and conservationists has soared to new heights, thanks to your dedication and our shared passion for butterflies. Together, we’ve achieved milestones that not only highlight our growth but also strengthen the impact of butterfly conservation worldwide.
A Year of Soaring Growth and Tech Evolution
This year, our eButterfly community blossomed! With over 4,000 registered users, including 1,049 active contributors, we’ve doubled last year’s numbers.
The launch of our brand-new mobile app in May played a pivotal role in this growth. Offering real-time logging and intuitive features, the app has been downloaded more than 2,000 times and earned a stellar 4.8/5 user rating. Impressively, 23% of our submissions this year came from this new tool, proving that technology truly can transform community science.
Meanwhile, the platform itself saw an explosion of data: 60,629 new butterfly records across 12,576 checklists! These contributions, documenting 269,054 individuals from 1,930 species worldwide, were often accompanied by stunning photos—over 42,000 in total! Your efforts are creating an unparalleled dataset for conservation.
Connecting People, Schools, and Communities
Our outreach initiatives this year have brought people together across continents. Webinars on topics ranging from butterfly ecology to our platform’s tools drew large and eager audiences. Workshops in Panama and Colombia were particularly impactful, with the efforts of our local ambassadors, Juliana Villada and Kevin Gauthier, laying the groundwork for long-term partnerships in South America. Together with schools and groups like Panama’s “owl_whisperer” and Colombia’s “Casa de Mariposas,” students and volunteers have recorded an incredible wealth of data.
We’re also proud of our continued work to protect the majestic Monarch butterfly. Collaborating with organizations like Mission Monarch and the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, we contributed to the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz, which logged 11,647 observations—a huge success!
Advancing Research Through Innovation
Collaboration has been a cornerstone of our achievements. Our partnership with the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA) continues to push the boundaries of AI-driven butterfly identification. This year alone, eButterfly data contributed to 23 peer-reviewed papers, tackling topics like migration, climate change, and species distribution modelling. Your contributions directly feed into groundbreaking science.
Overcoming Challenges
With great growth comes challenges. The sheer volume of data necessitated enhancements to our automated verification tools, and we are constantly encouraging users to participate in record identification. For those interested, our identification tutorial is an excellent starting point (Read it now by clicking here!).
Additionally, taxonomic updates across the globe impacted our AI model predictions and the species names our platform can process. To address this, we’re developing a robust system for updating taxonomy in 2025, including a new method called “Geo splits” to manage geography-based species naming seamlessly. Finally, maintaining engagement among casual users remains a priority, and we’re exploring gamification and personalized feedback to keep the community active.
Looking Ahead: The Flight Plan for 2025
Next year promises even greater opportunities. We’re launching eBLabs, a game-changing tool that will let researchers and conservationists turn raw data into powerful visualizations. Our mobile app will also get smarter and sleeker based on your feedback, while new social networking features like Likes, Follows, and Watch Lists aim to keep our community buzzing with activity.
Outreach will expand with workshops and resources tailored for underrepresented communities worldwide. We’re also diving into global conservation efforts and forging cross-border programs for species like Monarchs. To support these goals, we’re unveiling an online merchandise store and developing a donor program.
A Heartfelt Thank You
Everything we’ve accomplished this year was made possible by you—our users, collaborators, and passionate team members. Your contributions inspire us to keep innovating and fighting for butterfly conservation. Here’s to a future where butterflies continue to thrive, and the world grows more connected through science and community.
Let’s make 2025 a year of even greater transformation and shared success!