[Pollinator] World Bee Catalogue

[Pollination (AGPS)]

To the "Pollination Practitioner" community: (please post on your relevant
listserves, or circulate to members of coutnry/regional pollinator
initiatives):

> 		As you may be aware, the Global Biodiversity Information
> Facility (GBIF- www.gbif.org) in June of 2005 prioritized "pollinators" in
> general, and Apoidea in particular, as one of the cross-cutting focal areas
> to be considered for funding in 2005-2006, for the development of
> electronic catalogues (the "ECAT" call) , and the Apoidea as a priority for
> seed funding for specimen digitisation (the "DIGIT" call).   They have
> issued calls for proposals in these two areas.
> 
> 		This provides an excellent opportunity for two, related
> efforts:  the International Pollinators Initiative (IPI), and the UNEP/GEF
> (United Nations Environment Programme/Global Environment Facility)
> "Conservation and Management of Pollinators for Sustainable Agriculture,
> Through an Ecosystem Approach" project (also referred to as the UNEP/GEF
> Global Pollinators Project, or "GPP"), both coordinated by the Food and
> Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The UNEP/GEF Global
> Pollination Project is made up of national committees in seven developing
> countries, who serve as a committed user group, seeking to extend the
> knowledge base on pollination and use it to conserve and manage natural
> pollination services. Several other regional pollinator initiatives include
> both data owners and data users. 
> 
> 		It is therefore proposed to coordinate a proposal to GBIF on
> the development of an electronic catalogue of the Apoidea, to be generated
> by those taxonomists holding the relevant information, and to be designed
> with and for the user community, of pollination practitioners.  
> 
> 		We have been asking the bee taxonomy community to respond
> with information on the current status of catalogues in different regions
> and of different Apoidea taxa, that can form the basis for a World Bee
> Catalogue.  The response has been very favorable; many people wish to
> contribute to a joint catalogue.
> 
> 		We'd like to ask the opinion as well of the pollination
> "practitioner" community:  aside from taxonomic fields as required by GBIF,
> what are other  desirable fields from a pollination management perspective?
> (Many of these may be difficult to obtain, particularly with limited
> funding, and thus would not be "obligatory" information for people or
> groups contributing data to the catalogue).  
> 
> 		A possible list of "desirable" fields might be:
> 
> 				Floral associates
> 				Nesting behaviour
> 				Host or parasite relations
> 				Distributions (at least by country?)
> 				Body length
> 				Inter-tegular distance
> 				Nesting habit {miner; pre-existing cavity -
> ground; pre-existing 
> 					cavity- above ground; cleptoparasite}
> 				Sociality {eusocial; primitively eusocial;
> subsocial; communal; 
> 					solitary; cleptoparasitic; varies
> with locality] 
> 				Forage/dispersal range 
> 				Start of flight season {month} 
> 				End of flight season {month} 
> 				Voltinism {univoltine; bivoltine;
> multivoltine; variable} 
> 				Fecundity {avg number of offspring per
> female} 
> 				Adult survival {avg annual survival rate of
> adults] 
> 				Larval survival [avg annual survival rate of
> larvae}
> 
> 				Literature citations
> 
> 		We look forward to hearing your views on this matter.
> 
> 		with best regards,
> 
> 		Linda Collette 
> 		Senior Crop Biodiversity Officer and Focal Point for
> International Pollinator Initiative matters at FAO
> 		Barbara Gemmill (Herren) 
> 		Global Pollination Project Coordinator
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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