Biodiversity Information Science and Standards :
Conference Abstract
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Corresponding author: Katja C. Seltmann (enicospilus@gmail.com)
Received: 06 Sep 2021 | Published: 07 Sep 2021
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC0 Public Domain Dedication.
Citation:
Seltmann KC, Allen J, Brown BV, Carper A, Engel MS, Franz N, Gilbert E, Grinter C, Gonzalez VH, Horsley P, Lee S, Maier C, Miko I, Morris P, Oboyski P, Pierce NE, Poelen J, Scott VL, Smith M, Talamas EJ, Tsutsui ND, Tucker E (2021) Announcing Big-Bee: An initiative to promote understanding of bees through image and trait digitization. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 5: e74037. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.5.74037
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While bees are critical to sustaining a large proportion of global food production, as well as pollinating both wild and cultivated plants, they are decreasing in both numbers and diversity. Our understanding of the factors driving these declines is limited, in part, because we lack sufficient 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 either vulnerable or resilient to human-induced environmental changes, such as habitat loss and climate change. Fortunately, a wealth of associated attributes can be extracted from the specimens deposited in natural history collections for over 100 years.
Extending Anthophila Research Through Image and Trait Digitization (Big-Bee) is a newly funded US National Science Foundation Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections project. Over the course of three years, we will create over one million high-resolution 2D and 3D images of bee specimens (Fig.
2D and 3D images from the Big-Bee project will be available for novel exploration in bee traits, 3D modeling, and computer vision research. In this figure, two representations of a 3D model are shown with a dark grey background. This model is generated from 64 focal stacked 2D images taken at different angles. A subset of those 2D images is pictured here with a light blue background. Both 3D models and the 2D images used to create the models will be shared by the project.
Anthophila, natural history collections, specimens, museum
Katja C. Seltmann
TDWG 2021