Expanding Flower-Visiting Wasps Project
Hi iNaturalist wasp community!
This project has provided great insight into the association/interaction between wasps and flowers in North America (Canada & US). Indeed, this project has grabbed the attention of UK based project - Big Wasp Survey (BWS) – as it aligns with their existing citizen science project to study wasps as pollinators.
Pollination is just one of the many useful ecosystem services wasps provide. But we don’t know much about which flowers benefit from wasp pollination, or which wasps are most important as pollinators. So, working with the BWS team we are aiming to expand the geographical scope of this project to global observations, to discover more wasp-flower interactions/associations.
The name of the project will change (to Flower Visiting Wasps of the World) to accommodate global observations, but don’t worry other requirements will not. We’re interested in any wasps that you may find visiting flowers: parasitoids, solitary and social. The observation field “Name of associated plant” is required, and note that macrophotography may make it hard to identify the plant species. Please make sure to include the full wasp and flower in the picture.
All observations that have been added previously to the project will remain. Project members will now be able to add their own observations outside of North America (Canada & US), as well as adding other iNaturalist members’ observations.
We hope that you will join us on this journey to identify wasp-flower interactions/associations around the world, helping us study wasps as pollinators.
Please feel free to share this journal post and project so that we can reach a wider community.
More information on Big Wasp Survey:
Website: https://www.bigwaspsurvey.org/
BWS Twitter: @bigwaspsurvey
Email: info@bigwaspsurvey.org
Comments
Is it possible for this project to use the more common field "Nectar / Pollen delivering plant:" (nearly 50,000 observations) vs. the specified "Name of Associated Plant:" (less than 20,000 observations) ? Or in addition to that field?
That would make adding observations easier.
Thanks for the update @seirian, this will be interesting.
Re: the comment above (@whateverwatcher) about field name, I agree (if possible) it would be ideal if all projects used the same field for flower visiting, since there are currently many. See my forum topic about this here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/value-of-using-a-single-pollinator-plant-field/25125/14. In it, I also discuss how iNat. records transfer to Discover Life and GBIF, and it would be great if someday the plant association part of records also transferred (DL also separately records plant records).
So do we join the new project or do the things we've put into the former named project automatically get swooped into the new one?
@mokennon All observations that have been added previously to the project will remain (the project name and location have changed). No need to rejoin the project if you are already a member.
@bdagley @whateverwatcher Thank you for your comments. We have added the "Nectar / pollen delivering plant" observation field in addition to the required field of "Name of associated plant".
Sounds great. It may be coming but the banner image needs an edit. Maybe just remove the text since the correct project title is already laid over top.
As well, adding the Nectar / pollen delivering plant field was handy where in one of my observations the wasp was visiting one plant fruit while covered in the pollen of another. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/52423447
One update. In the forum discussion above (about what field to use for pollinator plant, in general for bees and wasps), people seemed to agree that hopefully someday there will be a "merge"/standardization between the many different fields different identifiers/projects use (over 10). This does seem worthwhile for all projects including new ones to continue to keep in mind. Since otherwise the massive databases being created remain partly separate/incomplete.
Beautiful new banner!
I have 70 species in my list. Can this be reflected in "Most Species?"
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?project_id=16764&place_id=any&verifiable=any&captive=any&user_id=greengras2000
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