With pollinators out and about down south, plus some recent outreach, we've had a nice pulse of new members. Welcome!

I recently had a fun conservation coffee hour to share a little bit about myself and the PIP project. If you'd like to tune in, you can watch the recordingsof my interview and other folks at Vermont Center for Ecostudies. Learn more about our internship program, Vermont's state-wide bee survey, our tick project, biodiversity atlasing and more.

A question came up in the chat that I want to address in more detail here. "What if I don't know what plant the pollinator was visiting?". That's a good question! First, your data is still valuable so definitely upload those observations to iNaturalist. Second, there are three steps you can take if you don't know the plant ID.

1) Take a second photo of the plant and submit to iNaturalist and link the two observations together . You can 'link' observations using the field 'Reference URL'. In the text box, include the URL of this second plant observation. Once you get some confirmation of the ID, you can edit your pollinator observation to include the plant species. One caveat to this approach is that iNaturalist wants cultivated/planted observations labeled as 'Casual', and they will not become research grade data points. But there are still helpful folks out there that like to help ID plants whether they are casual or not.

Here's an example of how I did this with a plant I wasn't sure of on my recent trip to the DR.

2)Label the plant by a broad taxonomic group. You can use the field 'Interaction->visited flower of with any identification in the iNaturalist taxonomy. That could be species, genus, or even just 'Plant' or 'Flowering Plant'. If someone else can ID that plant to a finer level, they can edit your observation to include that data, or leave you a comment to let you know. By putting observations into the project with labels like 'Plant' or 'Flowering Plant', that is a way to 'save' the observation to our project and signal you need an identification. Folks can then search for observations that need identification using this link. I sometimes do that if I want to save the observation for later, but don't have time to figure out the plant ID

Want to help ID plants?Here's a link of insect observations in the project labeled as 'Flowering Plant'

You can also add your observation to this new project, "What's that insect on?"which was set up by @lmtaylor specifically to help crowdsource identifications of plants that pollinators are visiting for the project.

3) Try a different identification app. The AI on iNaturalist is impressive....SUPER IMPRESSIVE. But sometimes with plants it struggles. And it doesn't usually provide suggestions of precise identification relevant to cultivated plants like variety. I have been trying out 'Picture this' app which is just for plant ID. It does cost money unfortunately, but it works really well. I would take some of the variety/cultivar (edit: and species) suggestions with a grain of salt (especially if the photo is poor), but it's identification of genus of flowers is usually spot on, even for tricky groups, and even with the pollinator on the flower. I've been pretty impressed so far. It even does indoor plants. So cool. Are there other plant ID apps you know of?

Ok, that's it for now. If you have any other ideas or suggestions, leave them below! Or share what your favorite sighting has been this week?

Spring is (almost) here! There’s still snow at my house here in VT, but for many folks the signs of spring are popping up quickly. We’re just starting to get a stream of new 2024 observations coming in of early flying pollinators visiting early blooming plants in the Northeast. 91 observations have come in this year already!

Spring is a very valuable time to collect new data for the PIP project. Because there’s many more pollinators in the summer, we don’t have as much data on early plant-pollinator interactions, so this is a great time to contribute. Some of our early flying butterflies and bees are species of conservation concen like the Early Hairstreak. Keep your eyes out for some of the earliest pollinators to emerge this spring in your area by watching your blooming trees and flowers closely and submit your interaction data!

Here are some taxa we’d love more data on:

1) Mining bees (Andrena sp.)

Andrenid bees are some of the earliest and most common bees seen in the spring beginning as early as February in some locations. Be on the lookout for species such as The Spring Beauty Miner (Andrena erigeniae) and Frigid Mining Bee (Andrena frigida). Many Andrenid species have varying degrees of oligolecty (a fancy term for pollen specialist), so knowing where, when, and what flowers they are using in very helpful data.

2) Cellophane Bees (Colletes sp.)

Unequal Cellophane bee (Colletes inaequalis) is the first Colletes bee to emerge in the NE. These early-flying bees can be found in a variety of different habitats, often making nesting locations along trails or in lawns. They are reported to be generalist flower visitors, but we need more than just 59 observations to see just how generalist they are!

3) Early Butterflies

Our early butterflies tend to forage mostly on sap and decaying fruit in the early spring, but they also visit flowers too. Keep an eye out for some of our earliest butterflies, the Mourning Cloak (Nymphalis antiopa, the Eastern Comma (Polygonia comma), and Milbert’s Tortoiseshell (Aglais milberti)all of which overwinter as adults and are among the first to fly in the spring. (We just saw a Milbert’s Tortoiseshell here in VT today!)

Thanks to all your help, we’re up to >35k observations in just one year of effort. Amazing! We’re excited for another year of collecting plant-pollinator interactions with you. If you’re like me, and it’s still pretty cold in your area, you can also help our efforts by assisting with annotating old records. Visit this page for a how-to guide on smart searches to find and annotate existing iNaturalist records with the interaction field.

A note of tremendous appreciation for everyone submitting data to this project! I'm am thrilled to find the project at close to 10k observations by the end of its first year! WOW!

In 2024, we'll be working on the following projects under the PIP umbrella:
1) Synthesizing crowd-sourced interaction data to develop a plant selection tool for the Northeast.
2) Installing experimental gardens in VT, NH (in collaboration with the Native Plant Trust) and in CT and NY (in collaboration with Plan it Wild)
3) Continuing our field study comparing methods for quantifying plant-pollinator networks in the Upper Valley, VT.

Every iNaturalist observation you annotate with interaction data helps these projects! Here's to another year of plants, pollinators and scientific discovery!

Thank you!
Desiree

Nearly 7000 records have been added to this project since we began in February. Wow!

One of the great things about iNaturalist is that many folks are already adding great interaction data to their observations. We can use iNat's search tools to find records that fit our spatial and taxonomic criteria AND have the field 'Interaction->visited flower of:' filled in. That way we can curate which ones are appropriate to put in the project. For example, here's how many observations with flower interaction data are in the different states:

Maine - 6
New Hampshire - 162
Vermont - 22,580
Massachusetts - 895
Connecticut - 824
Rhode Island - 0 (whoohoo!)
New Jersey - 1
Pennsylvania - 557
New York - 7,671

Not every record is appropriate for the project. Some are not flower visitors (i.e., caterpillars) or don't have flower information (e.g., 'unknown'). When we look at specific taxa, some are almost completed! Here's butterflies:
Maine - 0
New Hampshire - 0
Vermont - 1,039 (And a lot of those VT records don't have flower information anyway)
Massachusetts - 0
Connecticut - 2
Rhode Island - 0
New Jersey - 0
Pennsylvania - 0
New York - 15

Whoohoo! For these taxa, it is helpful to look thorugh records without the interaction field to see if they do include evidence of an interaction. For example, this Monarch is visiting a New England Aster and could be annotated and added to the project: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/190368639

If you'd like to adopt a taxon and state to curate, let me know, and I can send you a link of observations to review. Here's hoping we can get to 10k by 2024!

I am so excited about how much great data is already on iNaturalist from so many people reporting flowers that pollinators are visiting! In just a short amount of time, we've curated >4000k observations across New England, NY, NJ and PA.

With so many flowers in bloom, now is a great time to take a stroll around your property or favorite trail and photograph any plant-pollinator interactioHere in VT, we're embarking on a few projects to understand 1) how iNat data compares to systematic surveys, and 2) how interaction networks differ between natural and cultivated green spaces. If you'd like learn more, visit: https://vtecostudies.org/pip/

I've been taking some time to go through old records and add observations to the project that fit our criteria. You can help in these efforts, by batch uploading to the projects any observations you have that have the observation field "Interaction->visited flower of"

Here's the steps:
1) From the project page, click "Add from my observations" (edit 12/20/2023: this link should take you to the 'edit observations' page. If not, you can find 'edit observations by clicking the arrow next to your profile picture)
2) Click 'Batch edit'
3) Click 'select all'
4) Click 'Add to project, and scroll down to "Pollinator Interactions on Plants (PIP)'
5) Click 'Add'. This will now go through your observations and add anything that fits our location and taxonomic criteria AND has the observation field filled out.

That's it! Easy peasy. If you are having trouble, feel free to message me on iNat and I'd be happy to walk you through it.

Thanks!