Why is it important to identify bees?
To identify a species is to connect a name, and all its associated knowledge, to an observed entity.
Names are important in our society. They are the link between information from different sources (doctor, family, administration) and a person or an entity.
Species names are the same: without them, we wouldn't be able to benefit from the knowledge of past observations. Every observer would have to start observations all over again. Is it a pollinator? Which flowers does it visit? Are there many like it or not? Where does it tend to nest? What are its predators?
Without their name, it is tedious to improve our knowledge of wild bees. We can't monitor them on large scales, we can't study their importance in the ecosystems, we can't assess the health of their populations.
More importantly, without their name, it is impossible to create and enforce the legislation required to protect them.
Names are important in our society. They are the link between information from different sources (doctor, family, administration) and a person or an entity.
Species names are the same: without them, we wouldn't be able to benefit from the knowledge of past observations. Every observer would have to start observations all over again. Is it a pollinator? Which flowers does it visit? Are there many like it or not? Where does it tend to nest? What are its predators?
Without their name, it is tedious to improve our knowledge of wild bees. We can't monitor them on large scales, we can't study their importance in the ecosystems, we can't assess the health of their populations.
More importantly, without their name, it is impossible to create and enforce the legislation required to protect them.
Why the species level?
(After all, all bees could be considered important, so why bother identifying them to the species if it is difficult?)
The species is the standard evolutionary unit.
A species is considered a large but coherent group, in which individuals share a common evolutionary history up to today. As such, they share many traits and features, which is useful to understand them and to protect them: we can generalize knowledge from individuals of a same species with much less risk of being wrong than for individuals of different species.
Which helps us make informed decision about how to best study or protect them or their environment.
Because each species is unique. And once a species becomes extinct, the features that made it unique are lost forever.
A species is considered a large but coherent group, in which individuals share a common evolutionary history up to today. As such, they share many traits and features, which is useful to understand them and to protect them: we can generalize knowledge from individuals of a same species with much less risk of being wrong than for individuals of different species.
Which helps us make informed decision about how to best study or protect them or their environment.
Because each species is unique. And once a species becomes extinct, the features that made it unique are lost forever.
What are the risks of misidentifying species?
The risks are that we mix up information, which can have dramatic consequences.
For example, if we consider 3 species to be a single one, we risk hidden extinctions: one of the 3 species could be abundant and mask the fact that the two others are declining. In this case we wouldn't notice it, so we wouldn't do anything and let them disappear. And if those two species were the only pollinators to some plants, we would think that the surviving species is still pollinating these plants while, in fact, no one is anymore.
That is why accurate species delimitation and identification (or taxonomy) are crucial.
For example, if we consider 3 species to be a single one, we risk hidden extinctions: one of the 3 species could be abundant and mask the fact that the two others are declining. In this case we wouldn't notice it, so we wouldn't do anything and let them disappear. And if those two species were the only pollinators to some plants, we would think that the surviving species is still pollinating these plants while, in fact, no one is anymore.
That is why accurate species delimitation and identification (or taxonomy) are crucial.
What is the state of bee taxonomy in Europe today?
The short answer is: well behind where it should be considering the situation and the technology of our time. We need to increase our knowledge about wild bees.
There are hundreds of species that cannot be identified except by a handful of specialists. There are certainly many species yet to be discovered, and others to be clarified. This work is currently done by some researchers using combinations of DNA and statistical methods, but they are still too few and things are moving slowly.
This situation may result from the decline of taxonomy in academia during the XXth century. There is now little recognition for taxonomic work in the current academic system. The naturalist approach of natural sciences became an 'amator' science ('amator' in the sense of 'not their profession', not in the sense of 'bad quality'. Many amators proved to be brilliant observers and scientists in the past decades). As a result, knowledge about bees even regressed in some countries like in France, where there were almost no bee specialists left in the early 2000's.
At the same time, even today, in a time of strong public awareness regarding the importance of bees and pollination, bee taxonomy is currently restricted to a circle of specialists. It is not easily accessible without help from a mentor and a reference collection. Written supports for bee species identification can be scarce and are scattered in obscure literature hard to access and in different languages.
Museums, hosting type specimens for the bee species, the support of taxonomic research, are working on making more accessible their material through digitization of collections but the efforts are unequal between countries and most of them are still far from this goal. So studying a group of bees often requires to travel to multiple museums.
Considering the high demand for bee diversity assessments and bees identification, bee specialists are becoming overwhelmed by requests. The good thing is that they are getting paid for their identification work. The bad one is that they are rarely if ever paid to do taxonomy: they have little incentive to work on developing more accessible documents to facilitate and improve bee identification (but some of them do it anyway).
The result is a confusing taxonomy evolving slowly. A taxonomy difficult to deal with: the opposite of what is required to face the current urgency of the wild bee decline.
There are hundreds of species that cannot be identified except by a handful of specialists. There are certainly many species yet to be discovered, and others to be clarified. This work is currently done by some researchers using combinations of DNA and statistical methods, but they are still too few and things are moving slowly.
This situation may result from the decline of taxonomy in academia during the XXth century. There is now little recognition for taxonomic work in the current academic system. The naturalist approach of natural sciences became an 'amator' science ('amator' in the sense of 'not their profession', not in the sense of 'bad quality'. Many amators proved to be brilliant observers and scientists in the past decades). As a result, knowledge about bees even regressed in some countries like in France, where there were almost no bee specialists left in the early 2000's.
At the same time, even today, in a time of strong public awareness regarding the importance of bees and pollination, bee taxonomy is currently restricted to a circle of specialists. It is not easily accessible without help from a mentor and a reference collection. Written supports for bee species identification can be scarce and are scattered in obscure literature hard to access and in different languages.
Museums, hosting type specimens for the bee species, the support of taxonomic research, are working on making more accessible their material through digitization of collections but the efforts are unequal between countries and most of them are still far from this goal. So studying a group of bees often requires to travel to multiple museums.
Considering the high demand for bee diversity assessments and bees identification, bee specialists are becoming overwhelmed by requests. The good thing is that they are getting paid for their identification work. The bad one is that they are rarely if ever paid to do taxonomy: they have little incentive to work on developing more accessible documents to facilitate and improve bee identification (but some of them do it anyway).
The result is a confusing taxonomy evolving slowly. A taxonomy difficult to deal with: the opposite of what is required to face the current urgency of the wild bee decline.
What difference could IDmyBee make?
IDmyBee could facilitate access to information about bee diversity.
By centralizing information related to European bee species, by formalizing their identification criteria and by providing more accessible, more illustrated and more easily updated identification tools.
As such, IDmyBee would act as a catalyst for bee taxonomy by helping train new bee specialists.
It could help to prevent bee misidentification by clarifying which species or genera can be identified with few experience in bee systematics and which require reference collections or the help of experienced specialists.
IDmyBee could also facilitate the collaborative development of identification tools by providing support for academic recognition of such work: by attracting researchers interested in bee identification on a platform which explicitly states that these tools need to be cited as a scientific work to exist, we hope that the rate of citation of taxonomy-related work about bee will increase.
Such change in research practice could help to motivate more academic researchers to dedicate some of their time to bee taxonomy, or funding agencies to help hire bee specialists to improve more rapidly the current state of bee taxonomy in Europe.
By centralizing information related to European bee species, by formalizing their identification criteria and by providing more accessible, more illustrated and more easily updated identification tools.
As such, IDmyBee would act as a catalyst for bee taxonomy by helping train new bee specialists.
It could help to prevent bee misidentification by clarifying which species or genera can be identified with few experience in bee systematics and which require reference collections or the help of experienced specialists.
IDmyBee could also facilitate the collaborative development of identification tools by providing support for academic recognition of such work: by attracting researchers interested in bee identification on a platform which explicitly states that these tools need to be cited as a scientific work to exist, we hope that the rate of citation of taxonomy-related work about bee will increase.
Such change in research practice could help to motivate more academic researchers to dedicate some of their time to bee taxonomy, or funding agencies to help hire bee specialists to improve more rapidly the current state of bee taxonomy in Europe.
How can you help?
There are several things that you may be able to do to help IDmyBee achieve its goals. Find out what here.