Using thousands of social media posts, a team of scientists mapped the global spread of a South African succulent silently transforming coastlines from California to Portugal.
It started with a few innocent beach selfies on Instagram. But behind the golden sunsets and sandy smiles, scientists discovered a silent invasion in progress.
An international research team has used more than 1 700 social media photos to track the global spread of carpobrotus – a South African succulent (better known as the ice plant or sour fig).
While strikingly beautiful with its pink and yellow flowers, this species has been quietly taking over coastal regions in Europe, the Americas, and Australasia.
The ice plant’s bright blooms draw pollinators away from native vegetation, while its dense mats – sometimes stretching over 50 square metres – choke out local species and alter the soil chemistry beneath them.
An international team of succulent scientists
Researchers from the University of Galway, Stellenbosch University, Penn State and others analysed images sourced from Instagram, Google Maps and iNaturalist to better understand how these plants adapt across different continents.
“Thousands of people were unknowingly documenting these invasions in the background of their beach selfies and cliff-top sunset photos,” said lead author Dr Susan Canavan, an honorary researcher at the University of Galway.
“It gave us observers across the globe.”
The team found that in their native South Africa, carpobrotus flowers briefly and intensively. Abroad, however, it blooms over longer periods, producing more seeds and spreading faster.
The plant has also adjusted its flowering seasons to match local climates – from October in New Zealand to May and June in California and Europe – rather than maintaining its native flowering patterns from South Africa.
‘Difficult to control’
According to co-author Dr Ana Novoa from the Czech Academy of Sciences, the succulent is “notoriously difficult to control,” as even small fragments can regrow into new colonies.
Their findings, published in Ecological Solutions and Evidence, highlight how everyday social media activity is reshaping scientific research – turning holiday snapshots into valuable ecological data.
“Every scenic overlook with carpobrotus had hundreds of Instagram posts, but also showed us the bias in social media data,” Canavan added.
“Remote invaded areas remain invisible without citizen scientists actively documenting them.”
