Researchers say that a discovery in remote northern Australia has revealed that a species thought to have been driven to extinction more than half a century ago has been rediscovered in the wild.
The discovery was made possible by a chance photograph uploaded to the citizen science platform iNaturalist, which came to the attention of researchers.
Now, scientists have confirmed that Ptilotus senarius, a delicate shrub that grows in some of the outback’s most sparsely populated regions and possesses a distinctive purple-pink flower, has been rediscovered in rugged terrain near the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland.
The species hasn’t been documented by naturalists in the wild since 1967 and was long thought to have gone extinct.
An Australian Shrub Springs Back from Extinction
The remarkable discovery initially surfaced when Aaron Bean, a professional horticulturalist, noticed the plant while working as part of a bird banding operation in a rugged portion of Australia’s northern outback. Intrigued by the colorful flower, Bean took photographs, which he later uploaded to iNaturalist, a popular website and app that allows users around the world to map and share observations of biodiversity.
Sometime later, Bean’s images on the platform eventually came to the attention of Anthony Bean, a botanist at the Queensland Herbarium who, ironically, shares the last name of the horticulturalist who made the initial discovery.
Their common name was perhaps only one of the many serendipitous circumstances related to the discovery, since the original images finding their way through millions of observations shared on the platform and coming to the attention of a Queensland Herbarium botanist was remarkable enough—add to that the fact that, in another surprising twist, Anthony Bean had formally described Ptilotus senarius himself roughly a decade earlier.
“It was very serendipitous,” said Thomas Mesaglio of the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, who penned a recent paper documenting the discovery that appeared in the Australian Journal of Botany.
“Aaron Bean is an avid iNaturalist user who opportunistically took some photos of a few plants that were interesting on the property,” Mesaglio noted. Following the imagery that Bean obtained and its coming to the attention of the broader botanical community, researchers were dispatched to the property where the photos were captured, and, with the assistance of the landowners, the collection and confirmation of a specimen proved beyond any doubt that Ptilotus senarius survives.
A Breakthrough for Citizen Science
The rediscovery of Ptilotus senarius is not only a remarkable event for conservation efforts; it also highlights the growing importance of citizen science in biodiversity research.
With the availability of platforms like iNaturalist, members of the public with little more than a keen interest in the natural world can contribute valuable observations that often help advance science in meaningful ways.
In cases like this one, it can even lead to rediscoveries of species thought extinct or, in some instances, to the identification of entirely new species.
Thanks to such discoveries, several programs, including New South Wales’ Land Libraries initiative, have begun ramping up efforts to encourage landowners to document species on their properties and contribute observations to citizen science databases.
Among the most important pieces of information that citizen scientists can contribute are multiple photographs from various angles whenever possible. With regard to plants, being able to identify bark, stems, leaves, and other key features, as well as the surrounding habitat, can greatly help with accurate species identification.
Additional information that can assist with such identifications includes photos of soil conditions, nearby vegetation, scents the vegetation may produce, and information about local pollinators.
“The more information you can provide and the more context you can provide, the more potential uses that record will have in the future,” Mesaglio said.
Mesaglio’s paper, co-authored with Anthony R. Bean and Aaron Bean, is titled “Rediscovery of a presumed extinct plant species, Ptilotus senarius (Amaranthaceae), through iNaturalist,” and appeared in the Australian Journal of Botany.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.