Citizen science is a growing movement in this country. I’ve
talked about it before on the show, describing the Signs of the Seasons program
that uses the observations of amateur naturalists to document the phenological patterns
of seasonal events, like when the red maple trees are in bloom, when various
sea weeds become reproductive and when the first wood frogs are heard. The
timing of those events results from environmental cues, particularly
temperature, and thus changes in the timing of those key seasonal milestones could
reflect and inform our understanding of how the environment is responding to
climate change.
Another citizen science initiative underway here in Maine is
the Maine Bumble Bee Atlas, a project designed to use trained volunteers to
survey bumblebee populations throughout the state. Like the Butterfly and
Dragonfly surveys before it, the goal of the Bumble Bee Atlas project is to
document the abundance, diversity and distribution of bumblebees in Maine, in
the absence of any good baseline data. Because we lack baseline data, we don’t really
know what bees are here or how many of them there are. Historic records point
to 17 different species of bumblebees in the state, but those historic records
are incomplete. And while there have been documented declines in bumblebee
populations in other parts of the country, we don’t know if that has happened
here. At its simplest, the project will establish a baseline of understanding
with data from all over the state, collected over a 5 year period, that will
allow scientists to have a high degree of confidence that what is out there has
truly been sampled, and that the data set really reflects the diversity
distribution and abundance. You get enough people collecting enough data in
enough places, you stand a high probability of having enough overlap to get
good coverage. Citizen science is based on this premise, it accomplishes
through the use of knowledgeable volunteers what it never could relying only on
professional field biologists. There are plenty of us willing and interested
volunteers, and not enough field biologists to generate this massive, multi
year data set.
I recently attended the one day training session in
preparation for participating in this year’s sampling season, and learned that
volunteering is a great way to get education. I learned a lot I didn’t know
about bumblebees, it was very exciting for a super nerd like myself. Bumblebees
are of course of interest because of their ecological role as native
pollinators of flowering plants. Something like 90% of angiosperm species rely
at least in part on some form of animal pollination. Here in Maine there are
many different insect species that perform this pollination job. The
Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths), ants, beetles, wasps and hornets
(especially the wasp and hornet queens), flies, bee flies (which are bee
parasites), and bees. We have over 250 species of native bees in Maine, most of
which are solitary bees, only 17 of which are bumble bees. Relative to other
states this is actually a pretty low number of bee species. The boxes of honey
bees you see on blue berry barrens in late spring are native to Europe, and are
used commercially for agricultural pollination because their colonies grow
large quickly, providing thousands of foraging (and thus pollinating)
individuals in each colony.
It can’t be stressed enough the role these pollinators play
in terrestrial ecosystems. Plants and insects have evolved over millions of
years to rely on one another, and declines in pollinating insects result in
declines in vegetation. Plants are the source of all of our energy, they are
the means by which energy from the sun becomes useful to us biologically. In
both ecological and agricultural systems, without mechanisms of pollination,
you will see declines.
Next week we’ll look more closely at the specifics of bumble
bee natural history, and learn how their lifestyle makes them unique among
those 250+ species of native bees in Maine.
References:
Listing of citizen science opportunities throughout New
England (not sure how up to date: http://newengland.stewardshipnetwork.org/citizen-science)
The Maine Bumble Bee Atlas home page: https://ac41277bd54735c2b85336aff6fdfbfd153fcee3.googledrive.com/host/0B985dSJVRA1maGtVekhDUkJjYWM/
The Maine Bumble Bee Atlas blog: http://www.maine.gov/wordpress/bumblebeeatlas/
The Maine Bumble Bee Atlas on Facebook (current and great
photos!) https://www.facebook.com/MaineBumblebeeAtlas/
If you are curious, the Maine Butterfly Survey site: https://2d042df5ce2f94779d5a6c1b6c47d612202b3787.googledrive.com/host/0B985dSJVRA1mWm43NXVQWEhmVGM/
And the Maine Damselfly and Dragonfly Survey site: https://bad7c31b56f9e6bfcd572114fde5c911ee02ad88.googledrive.com/host/0B985dSJVRA1mbUNxVms3ejBSa1E/
