New online resource can help users ‘bee’ friendly when it comes to planting for pollinators

by Stephanie Allen, University of Sussex
August 10, 2022

An online database developed at the University of Sussex which documents pollinator-plant interactions, could help the public understand how to plant for pollinators and support biodiversity.

Remarkably little is known about the flower preferences of many pollinator species, or which insects pollinate which flower species and how these interactions change in space and time.

To address this knowledge gap, Sussex researchers have created one of the world’s first online, open access, pollinator-plant interaction database. The dataset currently contains more than 300,000 interactions and unites disparate publications and datasets from the scientific literature and monitoring groups. These include records from almost 2,000 pollinator species and over 1,000 plant species.

Keep reading: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.3801

Read the Ecology paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.3801