A specimen-level database of the world's bees (Apoidea) at the University of Kansas

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The University of Kansas has been awarded a grant to populate a specimen-level database of the world's bee species present in their research collection, one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. The project will capture data from 201,668 specimens of bees representing all regions of the world, bringing the database's total coverage to 379,071 individual records for about 9725 species, or nearly 50% of the world's known diversity. Each specimen will be georeferenced with precise latitude and longitude coordinates for each collecting event. Once completed, the data will be freely accessible over the internet. Bees are the most critical pollinators of both natural and agricultural ecosystems, underpinning the integrity of biodiversity, global food webs, and human health and security. These data will become readily available for research in ecology, conservation biology, biogeography, biodiversity informatics, and resource management. In addition, these data will be available for policy makers and educating the public about biodiversity and conservation issues, as well as the fundamentals of native pollinator distributions. This project will also help train the next generation of biodiversity scientists in the latest bioinformatic tools and research collection curatorial methods and standards.