DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5915012
title: Big Bee indexed biotic interactions and review summary

description: <strong>Extending Anthophila research through image and trait digitization (Big-Bee) indexed biotic interactions and review summary.</strong> Declining populations of bees impact plant-pollinator interactions in both natural and agricultural systems. While bees and other insects pollinate most wild plants and are critical to sustaining a large proportion of global food production, they are decreasing in both numbers and diversity. Our understanding of the factors driving these declines is limited because we lack sufficient data on the distribution of bee species, and on the behavioral and anatomical traits that may make them either vulnerable or resilient to human-induced environmental changes, such as habitat loss and climate change. Fortunately, wild bees have been collected by researchers and deposited in natural history collections for over 100 years, retaining a wealth of associated attributes that can be extracted from specimen images. This project will digitally capture data and images from these historic specimens, develop tools to measure bee traits from these images and generate a comprehensive bee trait and image dataset to measure changes through time. This will increase our understanding of specific traits that put bee species at risk of decline - a critical need for both sustaining our agricultural economy and the conservation of our natural resources. In addition, the large image datasets created by this project can be used for new artificial intelligence identification tools that will help improve our future pollinator observation and monitoring efforts. The Big-Bee project began in 2021 and is funded by the National Science Foundation to mobilize data about worldwide bee species to data aggregators (e.g., iDigBio, GBIF). The Big-Bee Thematic Collection Network (Big-Bee) will create over one million high-resolution 2D and 3D images of bee specimens, representing over 5,000 worldwide bee species, including all of the major pollinating species of the United States. The Big-Bee network includes 13 institutions and partnerships with US government agencies. Novel mechanisms for sharing image datasets will be developed and datasets of bee traits will be available through an open data portal, the Bee Library, for research and education. The Big-Bee project will engage the general public in research through community science via crowdsourcing trait measurements and data transcription from images. In addition, training and professional development for natural history collection staff, researchers, and university students in data science will be provided through the creation and implementation of workshops focusing on bee traits and species identification. All data resulting from this award will be shared with and publicly available through the national digitized biocollections resource, iDigBio.org. This is the first archive of Big-Bee data indexed by Global Biotic Interactions (GloBI). GloBI provides open access to finding species interaction data (e.g., predator-prey, pollinator-plant, pathogen-host, parasite-host) by combining existing open datasets using open-source software. This version of the Big Bee dataset includes interactions that are not just bees. Also in this version, the datasets included in this publication are specifically those institutions in the Big Bee project network and do not represent all bee interaction data found at Global Biotic Interactions. <strong>Bee Library Information - Statistics about Big Bee data providers</strong> The specimens indexed by GloBI are also found in the Bee Library. To date, the number of specimens and images in the library are listed below. The Bee Library taxonomic backbone is not yet complete, so information regarding the number of species is not yet available. From Bee Library (partner indexed records) 1,172,372 occurrence records 955,937 (82%) georeferenced 315,742 (27%) occurrences imaged 615,387 (52%) identified to species 9 families 329 genera 5,871 species 6,141 total taxa (including subsp. and var.) Collection Occurrences Georeferenced Imaged Total Taxa Interactions Indexed in GloBI (bees) ASU Hasbrouck Insect Collection - Bee<br> Records 11543 11542 573 213 728 Bee Biology and Systematics Laboratory,<br> USDA-ARS Pollinating Insect-Biology,<br> Management, Systematics Research 561820 547461 0 4697 N/A California Academy of Sciences 805 254 0 5 99 California Academy of Sciences - Type<br> Collection 1838 52 77 1433 N/A Essig Museum of Entomology, University<br> of California Berkeley 58490 54965 0 444 0 Florida State Collection of Arthropods 6959 6922 6050 238 0 Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard<br> University 10034 9806 820 570 83 Natural History Museum of Los Angeles<br> County 9812 4740 2546 345 0 San Diego Natural History Museum<br> Entomology Department 2153 1612 0 151 76 University of California Santa Barbara<br> Invertebrate Zoology Collection 8297 8045 1284 123 500 University of Colorado Museum of Natural<br> History, Entomology Collection 18043 18043 0 294 4723 University of Kansas Natural History<br> Museum Entomology Division 464795 275004 304392 0 112664 University of Michigan Museum of Zoology<br> Division of Insects 0 0 0 0 9646 University of New Hampshire, Donald S.<br> Chandler Entomological Collection 17685 17393 0 424 3137 USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring<br> Lab 98 98 0 0 N/A Family Distribution (from partner collections) Family Specimens Georeferenced Species ID Georeferenced<br> and<br> Species ID Andrenidae 201,729 91% 61% 59% Apidae 438,994 73% 38% 35% Apoidea 6 17% 0% 0% Choreutidae 92 100% 0% 0% Colletidae 64,203 75% 46% 45% Halictidae 251,691 87% 62% 61% Megachilidae 201,055 86% 65% 63% Melittidae 11,651 92% 75% 75% Stenotritidae 22 100% 59% 59% Geographic Distribution (from partner collections) Country Specimens Georeferenced Species ID Georeferenced<br> and<br> Species ID [Higher geography: has not been verified and<br> entered] 168 0% 76% 0% Afghanistan 1,009 47% 3% 3% Albania 7 43% 0% 0% Algeria 183 47% 4% 4% Andorra 8 63% 0% 0% Angola 782 90% 1% 1% Antigua and Barbuda 3 100% 0% 0% Argentina 22,366 64% 14% 14% Arizona 1 0% 0% 0% Armenia 48 52% 0% 0% Aruba 2 100% 0% 0% Australia 11,317 17% 11% 11% Austria 4,709 26% 2% 2% Azerbaijan 34 88% 0% 0% Bahamas 127 30% 73% 9% Bangladesh 7 29% 29% 29% BAR 3 100% 0% 0% Barbados 5 80% 80% 80% Belgium 37 84% 0% 0% Belize 384 91% 50% 50% Benin 8 100% 0% 0% Bermuda 1 0% 0% 0% Bhutan 10 60% 0% 0% Bolivia 16,258 45% 16% 16% Bosnia and Herzegovina 51 4% 0% 0% Botswana 71 61% 18% 13% Brasil 3 67% 100% 67% Brazil 27,665 60% 4% 4% British Virgin Islands 4 50% 0% 0% Brunei 18 6% 0% 0% Bulgaria 803 61% 0% 0% Burkina Faso 8 0% 0% 0% Burundi 5 0% 0% 0% California 3 33% 0% 0% Cambodia 2 0% 0% 0% Cameroon 1,124 6% 3% 3% Canada 15,116 95% 26% 25% Cape Verde 19 37% 0% 0% Central African Republic 116 84% 46% 30% Chad 5 0% 0% 0% CHILE 4 100% 100% 100% Chile 11,065 42% 20% 19% China 692 53% 0% 0% CHINA 34 97% 100% 97% Christmas Island 3 0% 0% 0% Colombia 6,003 43% 7% 5% Commonwealth of the Bahamas 31 16% 100% 16% Comoros 3 0% 0% 0% Congo 1 100% 100% 100% Congo, the Democratic Republic of the 1 0% 0% 0% COS 2 100% 100% 100% Costa Rica 38,235 80% 60% 59% Croatia 718 65% 7% 6% Cuba 307 47% 3% 3% Cyprus 514 68% 3% 3% Czech Republic 4,628 61% 1% 1% Democratic Republic of Congo 55 75% 95% 69% Democratic Republic of the Congo 685 40% 3% 3% Denmark 27 44% 52% 44% Dominica 5 20% 20% 20% Dominican Republic 34 38% 32% 32% Ecuador 3,978 64% 14% 12% Ecuador/Peru 3 100% 100% 100% Egypt 1,496 60% 19% 18% El Salvador 377 43% 9% 6% England; United Kingdom 28 100% 0% 0% Eritrea 3 0% 0% 0% Estonia 9 89% 89% 89% Ethiopia 81 25% 20% 6% Federated States of Micronesia 3 33% 33% 33% Fiji 7 0% 14% 0% Fiji Islands 277 21% 0% 0% Finland 284 62% 2% 2% Florida 16 100% 0% 0% France 750 95% 22% 21% French Guiana 6,748 38% 4% 4% French Polynesia 35 66% 49% 34% Gabon 121 13% 60% 8% Gambia 7 43% 71% 43% Georgia 6 100% 0% 0% Germany 471 58% 13% 11% Ghana 111 36% 21% 20% Great Britain 5,179 98% 0% 0% Greece 2,115 91% 10% 9% Greenland 2 0% 0% 0% Grenada 4 50% 25% 25% Guadeloupe 35 100% 0% 0% Guatemala 1,546 73% 10% 10% Guernsey 5 0% 0% 0% Guyana 838 86% 6% 6% Haiti 22 82% 0% 0% Holland 4 0% 0% 0% Honduras 1,014 65% 10% 7% Hong Kong 63 6% 0% 0% Hungary 473 94% 74% 73% Iceland 13 0% 0% 0% Idaho 1 0% 0% 0% India 6,234 69% 7% 7% Indonesia 1,994 50% 1% 1% Iran 9,186 71% 38% 38% Iran, Islamic Republic of 2 100% 0% 0% Iraq 34 0% 0% 0% Ireland 16 56% 6% 6% Israel 711 14% 10% 10% Italy 1,193 95% 12% 12% Ivory Coast 6 50% 50% 50% Jamaica 298 0% 2% 0% Japan 772 23% 22% 20% Jordan 122 31% 7% 7% Kazakhstan 210 7% 1% 1% Kenya 2,462 9%
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