Large language models overcome the challenges of unstructured text data in ecology

The vast volume of currently available unstructured text data, such as research papers, news, and technical report data, shows great potential for ecological research. However, manual processing of such data is labour-intensive, posing a significant challenge. In this study, we aimed to assess the application of three state-of-the-art prompt-based large language models (LLMs), GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and LLaMA-2-70B, to automate the identification, interpretation, extraction, and structuring of relevant ecological information from unstructured textual sources. We focused on species distribution data from two sources: news outlets and research papers. We assessed the LLMs for four key tasks: classification of documents with species distribution data, identification of regions where species are recorded, generation of geographical coordinates for these regions, and supply of results in a structured format. GPT-4 consistently outperformed the other models, demonstrating a high capacity to interpret textual data and extract relevant information, with the percentage of correct outputs often exceeding 90% (average accuracy across tasks: 87–100%). Its performance also depended on the data source type and task, with better results achieved with news reports, in the identification of regions with species reports and presentation of structured output. Its predecessor, GPT-3.5, exhibited slightly lower accuracy across all tasks and data sources (average accuracy across tasks: 81–97%), whereas LLaMA-2-70B showed the worst performance (37–73%). These results demonstrate the potential benefit of integrating prompt-based LLMs into ecological data assimilation workflows as essential tools to efficiently process large volumes of textual data.