How important has this source of observations, and more specifically iNaturalist, been to the study of global biodiversity?

That is a very good question.

I should say that it's been immensely important.

In, in GBIF, we put a lot of effort into tracking and documenting every single time somebody uses data from the network, and the way that, that this, this happens is that if researchers or scientists, they publish a study in which they've used data from the network, we ask them to cite it in a specific way so we can easily track that citation and link that back to the people who shared that data originally.

And just before jumping on this call with you, I pulled some numbers, and I could basically see that in all the papers that we are, have been able to track in which GBIF data is cited, data from iNaturalist is present in about three in four of those papers.

So definitely very, very important.

Because keeping up with the changes in biodiversity in all the different regions would become, I think, an overwhelming task if it was just scientific institutions.

C- correct, correct, and I think that the accessibility of this type of data also allows for studies that wouldn't otherwise be possible.