Post provided by Ronny Steen

Pollinators have fascinated ecologists for decades, and they have traditionally been monitored by on-site human observations. This can be a time-consuming enterprise and – more importantly – species identification and recordings of behaviour have to be registered at the time of observation. This has two complications:

1. While writing notes, or recording them electronically, the observer cannot continue focusing on the animal or behaviour in question.
2. Such data then have to be transcribed, with the risk of making transcription errors.

Bringing Monitoring into the 21^st Century

Although on-site human observations have predominated, today’s widespread availability of digital monitoring equipment has enabled unique data on flower visitors to be collected. In my research, I have used a time-efficient automated procedure for monitoring flower-visiting animals – namely foraging bumblebees visiting focal white clovers and honeybees visiting thistles.

Continue reading “Automatic Camera Monitoring: A Window into the Daily Life of Pollinators”