How to submit sightings

What's a "sighting"?
A "sighting" is when you submit an observation of a certain species of living thing - a.k.a. a monarch butterfly, or multiple monarch butterflies. For each submission, you can submit up to five different photos of the species that you've spotted.

How to submit a sighting?
First, find an interesting bird, insect, reptile, plant, fungi - any living thing that's wild (not domesticated). To submit a sighting of it, you can either take a new photo with your device, or you can load an existing photo from your device's gallery. You can earn bonus points by correctly identifying your sighting and by adding field notes. Everyone has a daily sighting submission limit. However you can raise your limit by either identifying sightings, or becoming a QuestaGame member. Photos or screen shots from your device must be at less than 14 days old to be used in a sighting.

Can I submit sightings of my pets or garden plants?
QuestaGame accepts sightings of all 'wild' living things, but it won't accept cultivated plants (such as the plants in your garden), or captive animals (like your pets or zoo animals). Don't worry though, you don't have to look hard to find the wild life around you!

Can I submit the same species multiple times through multiple sightings?
Yes, as long as you don't submit the same species within 1km or 24 hours of each other.

So if you submit a monarch butterfly, and then move 1km and find another monarch butterfly, you can submit it. Or if you submit a monarch butterfly that's perched on a statue, and you come back to that statue 24 hours later, and it's still there, you can submit it again.

Will the sightings data I collect be shared in public databases for biodiversity research?
Within the app, in Menu >Settings, you can decide whether or not you wish to share the data. By default it's switched on, and will be shared with national and global biodiversity databases for scientific research (such as gbif.org). If you decide to switch it off, all your sightings records - including previous ones - will be removed from the public databases.

How does QuestaGame verify sightings so quickly?
QuestaGame has cultivated a unique network of taxonomy experts around the world, and as more QGame players improve their skills, the network of verifiers expands. QuestaGame believes that environmental expertise is valuable to society and deserves remuneration. A significant portion of any revenue goes toward funding top experts and ensuring quality verifications.