Collaborative development of a pollinator information web site: Educating and raising awareness of pollinators through partnerships

Alarming disappearances of bees and reports of collapsing bee colonies have caught the public’s attention in recent weeks and forced attention to the plight of bees and other pollinators, and what their disappearance might mean to agricultural and natural ecosystems worldwide. Pollinators provide an essential ecological service to over 90 percent of the world’s wild and cultivated flowering plants and an estimated one-third of the food consumed by humans. Yet our knowledge of pollinators and the threats they are facing is limited. Successful monitoring, management, and conservation of pollinators and their habitats depend on the availability and accessibility of pollinator data and information. In 2007 the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) Pollinators Project collaborated with the Ecological Society of America to develop and publish the NBII Pollinators web site in an effort to provide increased exposure, support, and access to important pollinator information. Phase I of the NBII Pollinators web site covers a variety of topics including pollinator-related announcements and news; conservation; farming and gardening for pollinators; learning about pollination; pollinator species; references; teacher resources; and what you can do. Visitors to the site can also learn about pollination syndromes, find resources to help them identify and report sightings of pollinator species, and recommended conservation practices. The web site benefits pollinators by increasing public awareness and providing more exposure of online resources about pollinators. The target audience for the site currently includes educators, students, gardeners, and concerned citizens. In the future the NBII Pollinators Project will address the needs of scientists, researchers, and taxonomists by supporting and promoting digitization, web-enabling, and increased access to pollinator data through this Web site and other collaborative efforts and tools.