Talk About Citizen Science Conserving Species!
Here's an interesting e-mail from Sam Droege, with whom I participated in bird counts at the Beltsville (Maryland) Agricultural Research Center which shares land with the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center.
This is a blitz you do from your computer, indoors, transcribing data that can help save bumble bees, one of the native pollinators that are more efficient in the United States than the European honey bees, which are also in decline.
I can't do it because it's this Saturday, from 1 to 4 p.m., and it's a worldwide event because bumble bees are in decline worldwide. (I didn't know that!)
Today at 8:26 PM
BUMBLE BEE BLITZ
[Feel free to send this message to other related listservs]
Worried about the declines and changes in worldwide populations of Bumble Bees? No? Well you should and now you can help as long as you have a computer with Internet access.
The U.S. National Museum Entomology Department has just scanned in the labels and pictures of 44,000 Bumble Bee specimens in their collection (many more to come) and this Saturday the objective is to harness the online power of the world to get them all transcribed and into their database.
These Bumble Bees form the baseline for comparisons with current populations, but are useless unless the data are accessible.
This is where you come in.....
The event will take place this Saturday from 1-4 p.m.
You can participate simply by clicking into the Smithsonian's Bumblentry website:
(hint: you can actually start transcribing now, only 1% of the labels have been transcribed so far)
or, if you are local to the Washington D.C. area and want to join the Entomological elite you can come down to the museum (with your laptop) and enter away.
You can register for the local event [here]:
Thanks to you the world will be a better place.
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Note the contact for more information on the event is: Robert Costello NOT Sam Droege
sam
Sam Droege sdroege@usgs.gov
w 301-497-5840 h 301-390-7759 fax 301-497-5624
USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
BARC-EAST, BLDG 308, RM 124 10300 Balt. Ave., Beltsville, MD 20705
Http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov
"Old maids are the support of the British Empire: Old maids keep cats: cats catch field mice that otherwise would destroy humblebee nests; humblebees enable red clover to set seed; red clover is good food for cattle; and roast beef gives strength to men who are the support of the British Empire."
- Extracted from the 1948 edition of Lutz’s Fieldbook of Insects of the United States and Canada
w 301-497-5840 h 301-390-7759 fax 301-497-5624
USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center
BARC-EAST, BLDG 308, RM 124 10300 Balt. Ave., Beltsville, MD 20705
Http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov
"Old maids are the support of the British Empire: Old maids keep cats: cats catch field mice that otherwise would destroy humblebee nests; humblebees enable red clover to set seed; red clover is good food for cattle; and roast beef gives strength to men who are the support of the British Empire."
- Extracted from the 1948 edition of Lutz’s Fieldbook of Insects of the United States and Canada
--
Bees are Not Optional
Apes sunt et non liberum
__._,_.___
Posted by: "Droege, Sam" <sdroege@usgs.gov>
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