Estimating the extent and structure of trade in horticultural orchids via social media

The wildlife trade is a lucrative industry involving thousands of animal and plant species. The

that trade may be emerging on new online technologies such as social media. Using the orchid trade as a

We focused on themed forums (groups), where people with similar interests can interact by uploading images

between 150 of these orchid-themed groups to determine the structure of the network. We found 4 communities

English-speaking and Southeast Asian groups. In addition to the network analysis, we randomly sampled 30

recorded over 12 weeks, 8.9% contained plants for sale, and 22–46% of these posts pertained to wild-collected

advertising wild orchids for sale supports calls for better monitoring of social media for trade in wild-collected

plants.