Workflow of submitting records to Biome.

(1) Users can upload images that were taken by the smartphone camera or import existing images from the storage, including those imported from external devices. (2) Users select whether the image is about animals or plants to activate the species identification AI. (3) The AI analyzes the image and its metadata to generate a candidate species list. (4) Alternatively, users can input the taxon name manually and obtain a list of candidate species. To submit the occurrence record, users can either (5) seek identification assistance from other users through the “ask Biomers” feature, or (6) identify the species from the list. To the records, users can add memos and tags indicating phenology, life-stage, sex, and whether the individual is wild or captive.

Description of data accumulated by Biome.

Data distributions are shown based on all records submitted to Biome by 7 July 2023 (N=5,275,457). A Spatial distribution of records across Japan. B Accumulation of records through time. The barplot represents the number of records each month and the line shows the cumulative amount of records. C Distributions of records along with PC1 of all environmental variables and standardized area occupancy of urban-type land uses. Grey and green represent distributions of Traditional and Biome data, respectively. D Taxonomic composition of records is shown as the area sizes. ‘Other plant’ consists of non-seed terrestrial plants; ‘insects’ include Arachnids and Insects; ‘arthropods’ cover any Arthropod not included in insects; ‘other animals’ covers all invertebrates not included in the taxa above.

Data quality of Biome.

The accuracy of species distribution models.

Accuracy of SDMs using Traditional survey data (grey dots and lines) and Biome+Traditional data (i.e. 50% of Biome data: green). Each SDM was performed with a specific dataset, species, and the amount of records. For each species and amount of records, we computed the average model accuracy (Boyce index) from three replicated runs. Subsequently, we calculated the median model accuracy across species for each amount of records. These medians were then illustrated for each taxon in the strip of each respective panel. The “Endangered” category includes species that are listed as endangered on Japan’s national or prefectural red lists.