Researchers are exploring how social media signals can help map the spread of invasive species. This approach, highlighted by a university press office in the United States, uses data from widely read platforms to gauge where pests are appearing and how fast they are moving across landscapes.
Invasive species are organisms that settle in new environments and disrupt local ecosystems by reducing biodiversity and altering food webs. A well-known example is the rabbit that proliferated in Australia, driven by a lack of natural predators. Tracking their spread is not always straightforward, especially when traditional field surveys are sparse or delayed, prompting scientists to pursue new observation methods and tools.
Among the promising sources are public messages online, including microblog posts and casual updates. These channels stand out because they emphasize text and rapid, horizontal sharing, encouraging people to post quick observations about surprising wildlife incidents during daily life. This kind of open-source intelligence, or OSINT, relies on analyzing social media content to uncover patterns that might not yet be visible through conventional channels.
As part of an experimental study, researchers examined conversations about two species—the spotted lanternfly and the tomato hornworm—using data gathered from a popular analytics service that aggregates public social posts. The team also reviewed news articles and other media reports about these insects, drawing from multiple aggregators. The lanternfly, a pest native to parts of Asia, is capable of damaging a range of crops and plants, including grapes, cherries, hops, and several tree species. The study tracked lanternfly mentions and sightings primarily in Pennsylvania during 2017 and then extended the assessment globally over the period from 2011 to 2021. Similar attention was given to reports about the tomato hornworm and its impact on tomato production within the same timeframe.
“The project began as a proof of concept to determine whether these open sources could provide scientifically meaningful insights into pest distribution,” the researchers note. They compared the online signals with validated field data to assess how accurately these informal sources reflect established scientific findings.
Their results show that surges in online chatter about these pests often align with documented outbreaks of plant damage and with changes in their reproductive cycles. In addition, social media activity helped identify a lanternfly outbreak in a Pennsylvania county that had not appeared in the official agricultural records. This kind of cross-referencing between online observations and official datasets demonstrates the potential value of digital traces for understanding pest dynamics in real time.
Overall, the study suggests that analyzing public messages on the internet can contribute to investigating the spread of invasive species, offering a complementary tool for researchers monitoring ecological threats across North American contexts and beyond.