BioQUEST

QuestaGame regularly holds both global and local BioQuest competitions where players can compete for prizes.

## **Monthly BioQuests**

### **Competition Period - Start and End Time**

QuestaGame's competition schedule lists the start and end dates for each BioQuest. Each competition will start at 12:01am on its first day (Sydney time) and run till 11:59pm on the final day (Sydney time). Sightings must be submitted within this period to be eligible. Eligible identifications can continue to be offered after this period, until all eligible sightings have been verified.

Winners will be announced as soon as possible on questagame.com once all eligible sightings have been verified. Winners will be notified using the email address provided upon creating a QuestaGame account.

### **Sightings - Eligibility**

Sightings must be taken *and* submitted during the competition period.

Any sightings a player submits during the competition window will be taken to be the player's competition entries.

Players' standard individual daily sighting submission limits will apply. Players can boost their daily sightings limits by providing correct IDs in the in-game QuestaLab or in the Bio-Expertise Engine, or by paying for an Adventurer or Hero level QuestaGame membership.

QuestaGame will accept just about any sighting of a living organism in the 'wild'. However we **may not accept a sighting if we consider it "not suitable" for biodiversity records**. This may occur if:

* Photo is of a **human** (homo sapien) or includes a recognisable human. We humans are part of biodiversity, but right now, we need to learn more about the life all around us so we can better protect it.
* It’s a **domestic animal** (such as a pet or farm animal), or living in an enclosure (such as a zoo).
* It’s a **cultivated plant**. We all want to know more about the plants in our gardens, but we don’t accept sightings of cultivated plants.
* **Multiple species in single sighting**. Please try to only submit one species at a time. You can submit up to 5 photos of the same species in a sighting, but not multiple species in a single sighting.
* Photograph(s) **not clear enough** to identify a specimen; or not enough photos of the specimen from different angles (you can submit up to 5 photos per sighting).
* A **screenshot, copied image, or a photo of a photo**.
* A **duplicate submissions**.
* A **dangerous situation**, for example near a road or from a car.

QuestaGame won’t accept a second sighting of the same species if it is within 1 kilometre and 24 hours of the previous sighting. So for example, if you submit a photo of a monarch butterfly resting on a statue, QuestaGame won’t accept another sighting of a monarch butterfly within 1 kilometre of the same statue, unless 24 hours have passed.

**The easiest way to submit a sighting is to use your phone’s camera**. However QuestaGame does accept sightings that use photos taken on non-mobile phone cameras (so long as you can work out how to upload them to your phone). The system does confirm the date stamp of the image though, so if that metadata is missing, it won’t accept the photo.

**Photos have to be your own work**. If you are suspected of using someone else's image(s) you will be warned, and repeat offenders will have their account deleted.

### **Sightings - Scoring**

Scoring for sightings is based on QuestaGame’s in-game ‘gold’ rewards. Gold is awarded for sightings that you submit, based on the perceived rarity (by location and season) of what you find based on biodiversity databases. Note that plants are not yet scored on rarity, and instead receive minimum gold.

**For the protection of wildlife, players are discouraged from disturbing the habitats of any species.**Players should note that sightings of rare and/or threatened species, will not necesarily earn extra gold, as often these species have been well surveyed previously.

Certain gold bonuses in QuestaGame will not count towards your score for the purposes of this competition.

**Bonuses that will be included**are Correct ID bonus and Field notes bonuses.

**Bonuses that will not be included**are Quest bonuses; Head-to-head challenge bonuses; Player of the day bonuses; Clan of the day bonuses; and Equipment bonuses.

### **Identifications - Eligibility and Scoring**

To be eligible for the 'Champion Identifier' prize, identifications can submited through the in-game 'QuestaLab' or through the BioExpertise Engine (http://bee.questagame.com).

Identifications must be given during the period from the start of the competition to the time when all eligible sighting submissions are verified (i.e. when there are no more unidentified sightings from the competition period). **This means identifications you provide after the competition period may still be eligible.**

All identifications you provide during this time will be eligible, and they do not have to be against just eligible sightings, or just arachnids.

A correct identification is only awarded for a specific identification if your suggestion matches the final verified identification. That is, if you correctly identify a sighting to a genus, but the final verified identification is at species level, unfortunately you miss out.

### **Prizes**

The prizes that players can win will vary between BioQuests. They will be listed on each BioQuest's details page (accessed via QuestaGame's competition schedule) before the start date of each BioQuest. A player will not be awarded more than one prize. That is, if they are determined, through the rules outlined below, to have won more than one prize category, they will receive the prize that's total retail value is more expensive, and be deemed ineligible for the other prize(s). The other prize(s) will be awarded to the player(s) who are determined to be next in line.

### **Prize categories**

* **Champion spotter'** will be determined based on the highest overall score for an individual based on sightings submitted.

* **'Champion Identifier'**will be determined based on highest score from correct IDs provided by an individual (through the in-game QuestaLab or the Bio-Expertise Engine) during the competition and until the time that all competition sightings have been verified.
* **'Best find'** -  will be determined based on the highest scoring individual sighting.
* **'Best Photo'** will be judged by QuestaGame staff. **[Being phased out after April 2018]**
* **'Best #bioQuesting Experience' -**will be determined based on the social media post using the hashtag #bioQuesting with the highest number of engagements (likes, shares and otherwise) at the close of the competition period. Limited to the social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. **[from May 2018]**
* **'Active Adventurer Prize Draw'** - Winner(s) will be a randomly drawn from all registered competitors who submit at least 9 sightings within the competition period.

## University BioQuest

The University BioQuest is a worldwide competition among universities to discover, learn about and help map biodiversity for scientific research and conservation. Started by QuestaGame in 2017 with just two universities (UC Santa Barbara, USA and Sydney University, Australia), the University BioQuest expanded to 20 universities in 2018, with hundreds of participants submitting over 70,000 sightings and identifications. The collected biodiversity data is shared with the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF.org).