Big-Bee: An initiative to promote understanding of bees through image and trait digitization

Bees are critical to sustaining a large proportion of global food production and pollinating wild and cultivated plants. They are decreasing in numbers and diversity. Our understanding of the factors driving these declines is limited because we need more data on the distribution of bee species to predict changes in their geographic range under climate change scenarios. Additionally lacking is adequate data on the behavioral and anatomical traits that may make bees vulnerable or resilient to human-induced environmental changes. Fortunately, a wealth of associated attributes can be extracted from the specimens deposited in natural history collections. Extending Anthophila Research Through Image and Trait Digitization (Big-Bee) is a US National Science Foundation project. Big-Bee is advancing bee ecology and taxonomy research by creating and standardizing open datasets for taxonomic and computational analysis. We strive to overcome bee identification and discovery challenges by linking ecological and anatomical traits. The project is developing methods for high-resolution imaging methods and data sharing. These image data enable the scoring of life-history characteristics and facilitate the identification of digitized specimens.