Pollinator Portraits from the Prairie Pollinator Project
The Prairie Pollinator Project is an epic endeavor to map pollinator networks in restored prairie ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest. The project is led by Susan Waters - www site HERE - in collaboration with the Institute for Applied Ecology. The project has accumulated several thousand specimens, affixed with tiny labels in hundreds of boxes. These encompass the fantastic diversity to be discovered in the small space of a Pacific Northwest prairie. Some of this is evident at a glance, bees that are iridescent green (Ceratina), brick-red (Nomada), hairy in the extreme (Anthophora), and enormous (Bombus). The next level is harder. Typical sweat bees (Halictidae) are brown and black with hairy white stripes. Among these are several dozen species distinguished by the details - the distribution of tiny pits, or the precise shape of the "carina of the posterior propodeum." Another problematic group, the mason bees (Osmia), have a generally consistent appearance but comprise perhaps 75 species in Oregon.
Images in this gallery are from our specimen collection, representing pollinators at 14 sites in the Pacific Northwest. We've photographed them for own use, as vouchers, and to help in identifications by others frustrated, as we have been, by the lack of exemplars for comparison of samples. We also shoot them because they are beautiful, and worthy of close scrutiny.
Images of pollinators in the field.
Flowers that pollinators visit.
Images in this gallery are from our specimen collection, representing pollinators at 14 sites in the Pacific Northwest. We've photographed them for own use, as vouchers, and to help in identifications by others frustrated, as we have been, by the lack of exemplars for comparison of samples. We also shoot them because they are beautiful, and worthy of close scrutiny.
Images of pollinators in the field.
Flowers that pollinators visit.
