Bumble Bee Watch is a citizen science project that aims to map the year-round habitats of over 40 different species of bumble bees in order to learn how to best protect them in years to come. The project is directed by a number of Canadian organizations: Wildlife Preservation Canada; the University of Ottawa; York University; Beespotter; the Montreal Insectarium; the Natural History Museum, London; and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Those interested in participating in the project are invited to photograph bees to be added to the project's map. After users upload a photograph, they are asked to identify the bee's species, if possible. In the bumble bee species section, visitors will find a helpful guide to different bee species, complete with a photograph and diagram of each bee, a map of their geographic range, and a list of the flowers the species pollinates. After the bee's identifications are checked by an expert, the photograph is added to the Bumble Bee Watch gallery (which currently contains over 26,000 photographs of bees) and the accompanying data is incorporated into the project's dataset. Visitors can explore this data with ease through a series of drop-down menus that filter data by species, province/state, and year.
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