There are more than 20,000 global bee species that are vital for plant health and food production.
Now, a new UC Santa Barbara data project is being funded to address bee population decline.
The project is called Big-Bee and the goal is to upload 1.3 million high-resolution images of bee specimens in a database that will allow researchers to better study the insects.
Katja Seltmann is the director for the Vernon and Mary Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration at UCSB. She’s an entomologist and her particular interest lately has been in wild bees.
Seltmann said bee species are decreasing in both numbers and diversity but researchers are still trying to figure out why — in part, because data is limited. She said studying their images through Big-Bee will help researchers determine the resiliency of different bee species.
“What is their natural history?" Seltmann said. "Also what parts of this natural history or what traits do they possess that may help them [or hinder them] in future climate scenarios?”
Kim Chacon is a lecturer in the landscape architecture department at Cal Poly. She has done extensive research on building resilient bee landscapes to help support the insects as their populations have begun to decline.
“We need pollinators to pollinate food. That’s a really big deal," Chacon said. "We are a huge agricultural state. Anywhere from one-third to two-thirds of every bite we eat is pollinated by bees.”
According to the USDA, the value of pollinator-dependent crops in California alone is nearly $12 billion.
Local beekeepers said honeybees that are used as an agricultural crop are under stress but not enough to be threatening the individual livelihoods of beekeepers.
Chacon said a project like Big-Bee is important for figuring out a plan for all bees and, by extension, our entire food system.
Seltmann said this research could also have long-lasting ecological impacts.
“The more that we know about individual species and the more we know about what the driving factors might be for species loss, the more we can eventually translate that into doable action for things like conservation of organisms.”
