Flying insects can be hard to identify, especially when they’re excitedly zipping around flowers! Are you having trouble working out if you’ve seen a bee or a fly? What are the key differences between a moth or a butterfly?
Wild Pollinator Count starts this weekend, on Sunday November 13. You can do a pollinator count in your backyard or local park any time until next Sunday November 20. All you need is a spare 10 minutes to watch a flower!
The fifth national Wild Pollinator Count runs from 13-20 November and the count organisers anticipate more than 400 observations will be submitted from around Australia.
The Wild Pollinator Count is a national citizen science project that provides an opportunity to step outside and enjoy spring in your backyard, while also contributing to science. The project encourages people to record local pollinators by watching a flower for 10 minutes during the count week and recording what insects land on the flower during that time. Continue reading “Media Release: Spring 2016 Wild Pollinator Count”→
Spring has well and truly arrived! Have you seen any of the new season’s wild pollinators in your local patch yet?
We’re only two months away from the next National Pollinator Count – it runs from 13-20 November 2016. If you’ve missed the first few and are wondering what this event is all about, here’s a brief recap:
– What’s it all about? The national Wild Pollinator Count started in November 2014. We started the count to raise awareness about Australia’s thousands of wild insect pollinators…not just our gorgeous native bees, but all the flies, butterflies, wasps, moths, and beetles that are so often overlooked. (There are plenty of birds, mammals and reptiles that also pollinate, but we just focus on insects). Many of these insects aren’t just full-time pollinators – they are also important to ecosystems in other ways, for example by providing natural pest control services. The count runs biannually, in the second full week of April (autumn) & November (spring), every year. We hope that participants will join in regularly, as this will give them the opportunity to keep track of seasonal patterns of wild pollinators and flowers in their local area.
– Is this a citizen science project? There are many different definitions of a citizen science project. We think any project that encourages non-scientists to engage with scientific methods on a regular basis is a citizen science project. Our count protocol is based on standard scientific methods that pollination ecologists around the world use to collect data on pollinator insects. Having a standard counting method, which can be conducted at multiple locations within a set period of time, enhances the quality of our data. Continue reading “The next Wild Pollinator Count is on soon. What’s it all about?”→
The autumn 2016 count is now over. Thanks to all who contributed observations!
The submission form will remain open until Sunday April 24 for you to submit your observations. From a quick glance through the observations we’ve received so far, residents from at least 5 states have participated. We’re looking forward to finding out what wild pollinators they’ve seen!
The next spring count will be on between 13-20 November 2016. In the meantime, you can still share any wild pollinator sightings and resources on social media using the #ozpollinators hashtag. We also have a Bowerbird project and a Flickr album you can view all year round.
Wild Pollinator Count starts now, Sunday 10 April. You have until next Sunday 17 April to count wild pollinators on flowers in your neighbourhood. Remember, each count is only 10 minutes, but you can count as many times during the week as you like, and submit each observation separately.
The next round of the Wild Pollinator Count is nearly here. Help us to build a picture of the pollinator insects that are active in your area at this time of year by doing your own count between Sunday April 10th and Sunday April 17th.
While you don’t need any fancy equipment or special skills to participate in the Wild Pollinator Count, you might like to plan ahead so you’re all set to go.
With the seasonal differences compared to November (our other count period), you can expect to find different flowers in bloom and perhaps different species or numbers of pollinator insects.
Where will you count?
The project is designed to allow participants to count as close to home as possible. So your garden or a flowering plant in the neighbourhood are great places to start. If you have a favourite bushland or park, you might like to count there. Across Australia the range of plants flowering in the count week will vary, so pick a spot where you can find flowers to watch. If a plant you watched in November is flowering, you might like to count again on it to see if the pollinator insects visiting are similar or different.
Remember, we’re keen to know which plant you observed for the count, and whether it’s a native or exotic. If you aren’t sure of the plant name, you might try to find out or you could share a photo with your count. If you would like to observe a number of plants, please try to do each plant as a separate count. This way, we see which plants and pollinators are associated, rather than a more general picture of the pollinators across a garden or landscape.
When will you count?
Thea O’Loughlin tweeted the “cuppa and count” approach last November. Thanks @TerraThea
Many pollinator insects are only active when it’s warm (over 15° C), so we recommend trying to count on a sunny day. If the weather is cooler or overcast for your count, you might see mainly flies, European honey bees or European wasps. They tend to be more cold-tolerant than native bees, wasps or other flying insects. If the forecast isn’t great in your area on days you have time to spare, you might like to try to do a count in a lunch or tea break to take advantage of better conditions. If you’d like you can also note the weather in your observation notes (but you don’t have to).
Tell your friends and keep in touch
Don’t forget you can keep up with all the news from the count by subscribing to our email news, following our website or via the #OzPollinators hashtag on social media (we tweet but the hashtag works for public posts on facebook and instagram too!). During the count you can upload photos to our flickr group or post to our project on Bowerbird.org.au.
Join the fun by adding your comments or photos during the count, or even as you plan for the week … the more the merrier!
In February 1992, in a garden in the waterfront suburb of Hobart, Battery Point, a couple of bumblebees turned up. They were Bombus terrestris, the large earth bumblebee, and their presence was a surprise, given that no native bumblebees exist in Tasmania or mainland Australia. At first only two bees were seen, but by the following year they were popping up all around Hobart. It is highly likely that one or a few bumblebee queens had made it to Tasmania by boat from New Zealand, where they persist in successful, long-term, feral populations. The Battery Point bees could have arrived as either accidental stowaways, or as a deliberate and illegal introduction by an unknown offender? Now, exactly 24 years later, bumblebees have successfully established across every region of Tasmania, and are found in both urban environments and a wide range of native vegetation types.
Early this month an Australian Senate Committee was established to assess “The risks and opportunities associated with the use of the bumblebee population in Tasmania for commercial pollination purposes”. The committee lists seven focus points related to the potential use of bumblebees in commercial crop pollination, which they plan to investigate further.
The large earth bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, is now common across Tasmania. In this photo a worker bee visits an introduced thistle. Large earth bumblebees were introduced to Tasmania from New Zealand in 1992. They are not native to New Zealand either, however, having been introduced there from England over 100 years ago for the pollination of red clover. While Australia has an estimated 2000 native bee species, we have no native bumblebees (Bombus spp.). Photo: Loy Xingwen
Bumblebees and crop pollination
For some time, glasshouse farmers (in particular tomato and capsicum growers, both in Tasmania and on the Australian mainland) have been calling for the legalised use of introduced bumblebees in the pollination of their crops. Evidence from overseas shows that bumblebees are very effective pollinators of crops such as tomatoes, capsicums, eggplants, chillies, and blueberries. The reason for this is that these plant species benefit from a type of pollination known as ‘buzz pollination’. The pollen from buzz pollinated plants is presented in their flowers differently to the way it is in most other types of flowering plants. In ‘typical’ flowers, the pollen is presented on the outside of the male part of the flower, the anther. In plants that are buzz pollinated, however, the anther is tubular in structure, and the pollen is presented inside this. To get the pollen out of this tube most effectively the flower is vibrated, to shake the pollen out of the end of the tube. Continue reading “A pollination predicament: Bumblebees and their presence in Tasmania”→
We are pleased to announce the dates for the autumn National Wild Pollinator Count, April 10-17 2016.
To help keen pollinator counters plan ahead, we have also decided to lock in the second full week of April & November for future count weeks, which will run from Sunday-Sunday. We will still remind you of exact dates prior to each count.
If you haven’t already, make sure to sign up for our e-news updates to keep up with WPC news and blog posts. And you can share photos and resources with us year-round via the #ozpollinators hashtag on Twitter or the WPC project page in Bowerbird.
Just a quick reminder to submit your observation data by Friday 27 November – click here to submit.
And don’t forget our photo competition, with lots of categories, including one for students! Entries close Friday 27 November too. If you have already emailed us some photos as part of your count, consider entering 1 or 2 in the competition. Photos that have been emailed to us without a competition entry form will not automatically be included in judging, so please fill out an entry form if you would like to enter (and make sure to let us know which photos you are entering!).
Wild Pollinator Count 