iNat is a remarkable general-purpose biodiversity platform with extraordinary reach, and many of our users contribute to both. Tey are not competitors so much as complements — a relationship worth understanding clearly. Te most useful analogy is eBird.
Te birding community supports both eBird and iNaturalist without much hand-wringing about redundancy, because eBird provides a depth of tools for a specific community that a general platform cannot replicate. MO occupies the same position for mycology. Te differences are concrete. iNat’s
“Research Grade” designation is granted when a majority of at least two users agree on an identification, regardless of their mycological expertise. A
confident-looking identification from a non-specialist can tip an observation into Research Grade and from there into the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), where it enters the scientific record. For mycologists who have encountered distribution maps built partly on shaky identifications, the problem is familiar. MO’s identification approach, with its emphasis on expertise and deliberation over simple vote tallying, is designed to produce more trustworthy data — not just more of it. Te feature set reflects the same
priorities. Our foray recording and specimen vouchering workflow ties observations to physical specimens and fungarium records. DNA sequence data is treated as a first-class component of an observation, not an afterthought — in iNat, by contrast, users have created dozens of ad hoc field variants for DNA data alone, with no normalization across records. Higher-resolution images are supported and expected. Recently added deduplication tools keep the downstream data clean. Tese are the features that matter to researchers building records that can support taxonomic work, distribution studies, and long-term monitoring. Tere is also a structural difference
worth naming. MO is entirely community driven — in its governance, its priorities, and its funding. iNaturalist is largely sustained by grants and institutional donors, which inevitably shapes what gets built and when, and which of its many communities — birds, insects, plants, and others, each more numerous than mycologists — exerts the most influence on platform direction. Our developers are directly accessible to the mycological community, and our roadmap reflects that community’s actual needs.
A Growing Data Pipeline Te two platforms are increasingly
connected rather than siloed. We can already import observations from iNaturalist (see
mushroomobserver.org/ articles/39 for details), and a proper two- way sync is in active development and expected later in 2026. We also provide regular data updates to MyCoPortal, which publishes participating institutional collections to GBIF — meaning that rigorous observations made on MO can enter the mycology
32 FUNGI Volume 19:2 Summer 2026
specific and the broader biodiversity data infrastructure in a consistent manner.
Recent Enhancements Te past several years have seen
significant additions to our capabilities. A full summary of 2025 improvements is available at
mushroomobserver.org/ articles/44, and a similar summary for 2026 is planned. Among the highlights:
• MO Field Slips (see
mushroomobserver.org/
articles/37): Designed for mobile use in the field, Field Slips streamline the collection process and capture contextual data at the point of discovery. QR codes automatically find or create associated observations, linking physical collections to digital records at the moment of collection — a workflow that proved its value at the 2025 NEMF Sam Ristich Foray, where over 1,000 collections were documented and sequenced over a single weekend.
• Projects and Data Tools: Enhanced project tools offer
structured ways to group observations around themes — from regional forays to targeted research initiatives — helping coordinate community efforts and support systematic data collection. Tis includes target names and locations for projects to support efforts like the FUNDIS Rare Species Challenges.
• iNaturalist Import: Integration tools that allow iNat observations to be imported into MO make it easier for users of both platforms to consolidate their fungal records in MO’s more specialized environment.
• MyCoPortal Exports: Regular data exports to MyCoPortal
ensure that MO’s observations contribute to institutional specimen databases and, through MyCoPortal’s GBIF publishing, to the global biodiversity record.
• Te “Occurrence” Concept: A new way to group multiple observations of the same physical collection will better reconcile field records with specimens held in fungaria, strengthening the link
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