Hi all,

It's the FINAL YEAR of data collection for the Empire State Native Pollinator Survey, barring some budgetary miracle and/or wealthy benefactor. (About equally unlikely.) You have amassed an incredible number of records of the project's focal taxa and we thank you for all your observations over the past three years. This winter we will begin to compile data from all sources (iNaturalist, recent specimen collections, museum collections, partner datasets) to yield the most complete picture of the distribution and status of NY's native pollinators. Our report will be complete at the end of 2021.

To that end, please see Project Coordinator Erin White's call for data (which some of you may have received separately as well), pasted below. If you have photographs you've been waiting for fall to submit to iNaturalist, now's the time. And if you have expertise in our focal taxa, please help with identifications. We'd love to get as many observations in as possible by Sept. 30. Of course observations and identifications may still be made afterward, but later in fall we'll download the data from iNat and work with that static dataset for our final report, so don't wait too long!

Thanks for everything,
Matt

Hi All,

I’ve heard from many of you individually this summer and thank you for your continued effort to document our native pollinators in NY! It is that time of year to work on getting your data compiled and sent to us at the NY Natural Heritage Program.

Thanks to all of you who have submitted photos this season! We have had a lot of activity on our ESNPS iNaturalist page (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/empire-state-native-pollinator-survey). If you have taken photographs for the project that you have not submitted yet, please upload these to our iNaturalist project. For detailed instructions on how to submit photos, please refer to our Participant Handbook beginning on page 17 (http://nynhp.org/files/Pollinators/participant_handbook_ESNPS_Apr2018.pdf).

If you completed hand-netting or bowl-trapping surveys, please work on getting your specimens processed and pinned and data sheets compiled. For details on how to produce high quality pinned specimens, please refer to the Handbook beginning on page 29. We will only be able to accept specimens that have been properly processed and pinned. One of our project Advisors, Sam Droege from USGS, has made specimen pinning videos available (links below) and we pretty much follow these techniques. There are slight differences, so I urge you to also read our Handbook.

Please reach out to me if you have specimens to submit and we can make arrangements to meet in Albany for a specimen exchange or we can discuss how you can ship your specimens to us (also found on page 38 of the Handbook).

Please submit data (photos, data sheets, specimens) by Wednesday, September 30th. It is important that we receive your data by this date to allow us time to database your information and identify vouchers this fall and winter. Any late season observations can still be made and we’ll put another call for these out in November. Please work on getting your early season-Sept. data to us by the end of September. This is especially important as it is our final year of the project and our experts need ample time to make identifications.

Thank you so much for your efforts! Please e-mail me with any questions at white@nynhp.org.

Stay safe and healthy,
Erin

How to Dry Bees, Sam Droege
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=935jlJep6go

How to Pin Specimens, Sam Droege
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2F8LBQV5L0