A bee or not a bee? That is the question!
Identifying pollinators can be a challenging task when exploring your community garden, tending to your home garden, or while taking a stroll in the park.
However, there are many resources available to help you identify the bees, hoverflies, butterflies and other important pollinators in your neighbourhood.
A great first step is becoming aware and informed on common pollinators in your area – not all areas have the same pollinators! This can be done through a simple web search with a reputable source such as iNaturalist.
iNaturalist is a species identification tool and a nonprofit social network of citizen scientists
sharing observations of biodiversity around the world. Once you join, the database allows you to search a particular area for species of interest. You can also upload an observation to have it identified by interested naturalists.
The iNaturalist platform also includes information such as how many times the species has been observed and the particular locations where images were taken. It is a fantastic resource to become more familiar with pollinators that may be hiding in plain sight.
iNaturalist integrates observations from many citizen science applications. If you are particularly interested in a species or a group of species, you could delve into some apps that cater to your particular passion.
For butterflies and moths, great sites to explore are the Butterflies Australia database and Moth Tracker. For the Butterflies Australia database, you can upload your very own observations of butterflies on their website or app. If you are more passionate about moths, specifically Bogong Moths, Moth Tracker will be the perfect database for you. With Moth Tracker, you can record your encounters of Bogong Moths or other unidentified moths.
If you’re still curious about more citizen science initiatives, the Christmas Beetle Count through iNaturalist is another great resource. By adding photos of Christmas Beetles to the iNaturalist Christmas Beetles Project, you can help with discovering distribution patterns and evidence of decline.
Bees, butterflies, and beetles are common pollinators that come to mind, but don’t forget about birds! Though they might differ in size, birds are vital contributors to pollination.
Birdata is a fantastic app when wanting to contribute to scientific data supporting birds. By simply downloading Birdata on your mobile device, you can start sharing your sightings and observations of birds. This simple task makes a big difference in helping researchers discover declining bird species.
These are just a few apps that allow you to observe and report on a variety of pollinators, both large and small. The more you observe and participate, the better you become at citizen science! Actively recording your observations through citizen science apps can go a long way in providing crucial information on threatened species, biodiversity, and other data supporting restoration and conservation efforts.
MORE HERE ON OTHER APPS.. SEE https://invertebratesaustralia.org/citizen-science
. Some good ones would be the butterfly app, the Christmas Beetle Count, and moth tracker.
ALSO, ADD info on https://birdata.birdlife.org.au/ explaining that many birds arepollinators…
By Sophia Bade
