Bumble Bee Watch is a community science program where participants submit photos of bumble bees from across Canada and the United States for expert verification. The data can be used to help better understand bumble bee biology and aid in their conservation. Yet for community science programs like this to be successful and sustainable, it is important to understand the participant demographics, what motivates them, and the outcomes of their participation, as well as areas that are working well or could be improved. It is also important to understand who verifies the submissions, who uses the data and their views on the program. Of the surveyed users, most participate to contribute to scientific data collection (88%), because of a worry about bees and a desire to help save them (80%), to learn more about species in their property (63%) or region (56%), and because of a personal interest (59%). About 77% report increased awareness of species diversity, while 84% report improvement in their identification skills. We found that 81% had at least one college or university degree. There were more respondents from suburban and rural areas than urban areas, but area did not affect numbers of submissions. While half were between 45 and 64 years of age, age did not influence motivation or number of submissions. Respondents were happy with the program, particularly the website resources, the contribution to knowledge and conservation efforts, the educational values, and the ability to get identifications. Areas for improvement included app and website functionality, faster and more detailed feedback, localized resources, and more communication. Most respondents participate rarely and have submitted fewer than ten records, although about five percent are super users who participate often and submit more than fifty records. Suggested improvements to the program may increase this participation rate. Indeed, increased recruitment and retention of users in general is important, and advertising should promote the outcomes of participation. Fifteen experts responded to a separate survey and were favorable of the program although there were suggestions on how to improve the verification process and the quality of the submitted data. Suggested research questions that could be asked or answered from the data included filling knowledge gaps (species diversity, ranges, habitat, phenology, floral associations, etc.), supporting species status assessments, effecting policy and legislation, encouraging habitat restoration and management efforts, and guiding further research. However, only about half have used data from the project to date. Further promotion of Bumble Bee Watch and community science programs in general should occur amongst academia, conservationists, policy makers, and the general public. This would help to increase the number and scope of submissions, knowledge of these species, interest in conserving them, and the overall program impact.

Community science programs provide an opportunity to gather scientific data to inform conservation policy and management. This study examines the accuracy of community science identifications submitted to the North American Bumble Bee Watch program on a per species level and as compared to each species’ conservation status, as well as users (members of the public) and experts (those with expertise in the field of bumble bee biology) perceived ease of species identification. Photos of bumble bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Bombus) are submitted to the program by users and verified (species name corrected or assigned as necessary) by an expert. Over 22,000 records from over 4,900 users were used in the analyses. Accuracy was measured in two ways: percent agreement (percent of all records submitted correctly by users) and veracity (percent of all verified records submitted correctly by the users). Users generally perceived it harder to identify species than experts. User perceptions were not significantly different from the observed percent agreement or veracity, while expert perceptions were significantly different (overly optimistic) from the observed percent agreement but not the veracity. We compared user submitted names to final expert verified names and found that, for all species combined, the average percent agreement was 53.20% while the average veracity was 55.86%. There was a wide range in percent agreement values per species, although sample size and the role of chance did affect some species agreements. As the conservation status of species increased to higher levels of extinction risk, species were increasingly more likely to have a lower percent agreement but higher levels of veracity than species of least concern. For each species name submitted, the number of different species verified by experts varied from 1 to 32. Future research may investigate which factors relate to success in user identification through community science. These findings could play a role in informing the design of community science programs in the future, including for use in long-term and national-level monitoring of wild pollinators.

In recent decades, some bumble bee species have declined, including in North America. Declines have been reported in species of bumble bees historically present in Ontario, including: yellow bumble bee (Bombus fervidus) (Fabricus, 1798), American bumble bee (Bombus pensylvanicus) (DeGeer, 1773), and yellow-banded bumble bee (Bombus terricola) (Kirby, 1837). Threats contributing to bumble bee population declines include: land-use changes, habitat loss, climate change, pathogen spillover, and pesticide use. A response to the need for action on pollinator preservation in North America has been to encourage ‘bee-friendly’ plantings. Previous studies show differences in common and at-risk bumble bee foraging; however, similar data are unavailable for Ontario. Our research question is whether there is a difference in co-occurring at-risk and common bumble bee (Bombus spp.) floral use (including nectar and pollen collection) in protected areas in southern Ontario. We hypothesize that common and at-risk species forage differently, predicting that at-risk species forage on a limited selection of host plants. We conducted a field survey of sites in southern Ontario, using observational methods to determine bumble bee foraging by species. The results of a redundancy analysis show a difference in foraging between common and at-risk bumblebee species. At-risk bumble bee species show a preference for foraging on invasive, naturalized Vicia cracca (tufted vetch). This finding raises the question of how to preserve or provide forage for at-risk bumble bees, when they show an association with an invasive species often subject to control in protected areas.

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Societal Impact StatementA diversity of values is needed to maximize the effectiveness of conservation planning, including policies and programs. The results of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Montreal, Canada, highlight the importance of a shift towards recognizing multiple ways of knowing in ecology and conservation. This review aims to provide a baseline of what is known about culturally significant plants in the Great Lakes Region of Eastern North America. The results of this research provide insight into the ways in which ecology has been conducted in the past and the importance of changing the way ecology is conducted in the future.SummaryBiocultural conservation theory allows for an examination of complex problems using systems thinking and conserving biological and cultural diversity together. In the Great Lakes Region of Eastern North America, wild medicine plants are an important part of what Anishinaabe people understand as Mini bimaadizi, or the good life, and of aki miijim, or traditional food systems. Given the various threats facing wild plant populations and continued global change, this review aims to investigate what is known about the pollination and breeding systems of culturally significant plants in the Great Lakes Region. The overall goal is to determine what proportion of these plants have had basic ecological studies done and the degree to which culturally significant plants in this region rely on insect pollination. A systematic review of the literature was conducted on breeding systems and pollination of culturally significant plants. Half of all the culturally significant plants included lacked specific information related to reproduction. Most plants that have been studied relied on outcrossing, and the most commonly reported pollinators were in the Apidae family. With the complex interactions between plants and pollinators and many insect pollinators experiencing population declines, it is important to determine the dependence of culturally significant plants on animal pollination. These findings will be relevant to conservation planning and policy in the future.