In an age when the boundaries between the real and the generated grow harder to discern, citizen science platforms that have become foundational to global biodiversity research now face a quiet infiltration: AI-fabricated species, indistinguishable to the untrained eye, slipping into databases that inform conservation, policy, and scientific literature. The threat is not entirely new — hoaxers have painted butterflies and invented creatures since the age of Linnaeus — but generative AI has transformed a rare mischief into a scalable crisis. What stands between the integrity of the natural reco