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Inventorying biodiversity has recently expanded beyond the relatively closed naturalist community. Thanks to the spread of digital technologies and the generalization of internet use, nature monitoring now concerns directly increasing numbers of people forming a mass who, though mostly strangers to each other, share a similar involvement in naturalistic activities through the internet. This online contribution has been investigated in a field study of ’Faune France’, the most important of all associative databases for faunistic taxa in France. We analysed the first operation year of the database from mid-2017 to end of 2018, and conducted a survey involving 1469 contributing persons. Our results consider both geographic and sociological dimensions. The observation effort was evaluated through investigations into territorial practices and sociodemographic profiling, based on an analysis of Faune France metadata. We conclude that the whole French territory is covered by observation records, but that these involve a diversity of recording practices from expert contributions to more casual engagement. The small community of experts (5%) contributes the most in terms of number and spatial distribution of data. This confirms the sociological profile noted in the survey singling out the role and practices of professionals of the environment in this citizen science. The case-study of Faune France is a first step in a social and geographical exploration of contributions in the wider field of French citizen sciences.

L’inventaire de la biodiversité s’est récemment développé au-delà du cercle des naturalistes. Grâce aux technologies numériques et à la généralisation de l’usage d’Internet, la participation au monitoring de la nature touche de plus en plus de monde. Cette contribution est envisagée à travers l’exemple de la base de données Faune France. L’analyse des données de la première année d’existence de Faune France, de mi 2017 à fin 2018, associée à un sondage de 1469 participantes et participants, fait ressortir des enseignements géographiques et sociologiques. L’effort d’observation des contributeurs et contributrices couvre tout le territoire national mais selon des modalités très différentes entre les experts, peu nombreux et très actifs, et les autres participantes et participants. Cela corrobore le rôle et la pratique singulière des professionnelles et professionnels de l’environnement dans l’alimentation de la base.