118 – Rich Hatfield – Queen Quest

Speaker 1

From the Oregon State University Extension Service, this is pollination, a podcast that tells the stories of researchers, land managers, and concerned citizens making bold strides to improve the health of pollinators. I'm your host. Doctor Adoni Melitopol, assistant professor in pollinator health in the Department of Horticulture. Many of you have no doubt heard of the importance of fallen leaf material for overwintering insects like bumblebees, and I thought with most of the leaves having fallen except for some oak trees here in Western Oregon, it was a great time to catch up with Rich Hatfield from the Jersey society. Of invertebrate conservation to talk about a new initiative called Queen Quest, Now Queen Quest. Is this citizen science initiative where you can? Go out too. A little plot maybe where there are some falling leaves. There's some loose soil and look for wintering bumblebee Queens. We know virtually nothing you're going to hear in this episode about wintering bumblebees, and so here's your chance to contribute to science. And I just want to. Let you know. Black Friday, November 29th, there's going to be a big Queen quest blitz, so listen to this episode and you'll get lots of details on how you can. Right. Rich is also going to give us a catch-up on a couple of things. He was recently at this huge Bumblebee conference held in Toronto, Bombus 2.0, and he's also going to give us an update on the Pacific Northwest Bumblebee Atlas. Remember, last year, at about this time, we had a first-year update. We can get a second-year update in this episode. And just to conclude, I want to remind you again. We have. There's the 2019 Orchard Bee Association annual meeting coming up. It's going to be in Riverside, CA on December 13th, and 14th. If you're in Southern California or somewhere close by, you should check it out. Orchard b.org to register. Hope you enjoy the episode. OK, I am. I am excited to be here at the Zarsky Society Office in Portland, OR with Rich Hatfield. Welcome. To pollination again.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Thanks for having me back. It's. Great to be here.

Speaker 1

We were talking before the interview, and you've just come back from Bombus 2.0 this meeting that took place in.

Speaker 2

It was in.

Speaker 1

Toronto and in lovely Toronto.

Speaker 2

Yeah, York University, yeah.

Speaker 1

Tell us how they meet.

Speaker 2

It was spectacular. You know, it was really there were scientists there from all over the world, really, including South America and Europe, and obviously all over North America and East America as well. And yeah, I was hosted at York University. Sheila Cola was really the kind of the main host. Wildlife Preservation Canada also sort of Cohosted it with them and they just did a fantastic job. It was a great program, with lots of great presentations, and lots of great conversations. There was a, you know, a lot of conservation focus, but also, you know, got down to Physiology and all of the interesting things. Things that are going on with Bumblebees, the acronym BOMBAS Bo MB, US stands for oh, gosh, let's see if I can do this on the spot. Building our science by using sound science, our building, our method. Sorry. Building our methods by using sound science. Yeah. So that's what the acronym stands for. Started the first one was hosted at Utah State University. The by Jamie Strange, and so this was the 2nd 1-2 years later and at the end of the meeting, actually Rummy van Damme, who is at Ecosur down in Mexico, offered to host the third one. So, in two years this 3.0 hopefully will take place in the state of Chiapas. In southern Mexico. Yeah. So that would be great, but there was a gosh, I mean a whole range of presentations that went on. We did an IUCN update.

Speaker 1

Right. And the listeners, what are you seeing?

Speaker 2

Oh yeah, sorry. So, the IUCN is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, and Gosh, probably close to a decade ago now, my colleagues Serena Jackson and Paul Williams and. Gosh, I probably shouldn't have started saying names because there's probably too many people to acknowledge that I won't. I'll just. Say there's a lot of. In, in forming. The Bumblebee Specialist Group and the goal here is to assess the extinction risk of all bumblebees in the world, and we've made. Quite a bit of progress in the new world in the Americas. And you know, we're a. little bit behind in the. Old World, but we sort of did an update and gathered new information to reassess the North American and Meso-American species at the meeting, which was great. And then there was. You know, a meeting on sort of echos. I'm looking at tracking bumblebees like in the landscape, and I'm looking at how to measure diseases. I mean, there's. This whole it's hard. It's hard, to sum up. A couple of minutes, but it was it. A really great. Meeting lots of great participation and. You know, exciting sort of cutting-edge science and in.

Speaker 1

The bumblebee world. It must be so great not being lumped together with all the other native bees because. These are distinct, but also just being able to get together with all your colleagues around the world who are thinking about these same questions as you are here in the Pacific Northwest.

Speaker 2

The US. Yeah, that's right. I mean, yeah, that's right. You often go to like or something like that and. You end up with the bumblebee. You know or whatever. And yeah, these were just all Bumblebee people. And so, you know, the side conversations were great, the networking was great and it's just great to have FaceTime with people that you often communicate with. All over the world. In fact, shockingly enough, I've been working with Sheila Cola for a long time. Eight or nine years now and we've never met in person.

Speaker

Before you know.

Speaker 1

If that is.

Speaker 2

No. Yeah. So, we got to meet in person, and I found out we also found that the meeting that Lee Richardson, who's a postdoc at UVM at the University of Vermont, and Paul Williams, who's at the Natural History Museum in London, they've also never met. And they wrote Bumblebees of North America together, right? So, they wrote this book together, but they've never actually met each other in person. So it was, you know, really. You know, just to a personal level as well as a professional and a developmental level it. Was a really.

Speaker 1

Great meeting. Well, speaking of networking, you were talking earlier with me about an initiative that sort of was launched at bonus 2.0. It sounds really exciting. Tell us a little bit about Queen.

Speaker 2

Quest. Yeah, I will. Just a little bit of background first. I guess so. One of the things that we talked about in the meeting was what we don't know about bumblebees and it's really a lot. You know we're. Especially when you compare bumblebees to mammals or whatever. When you look at conserving them like we can't at this point, we can't even begin to do what you would consider like a population viability analysis, which is a, you know, a pretty baseline thing to do in conservation biology. It's this principle that you. Can sort of. We look at the life cycle of an animal. Find out sort of where the. The pinch points are like where is the animal struggling? Why aren't they thriving? Is it when they're in the infant stage? Is it when they're in an egg, or is it when they're an adult? And so, we don't know enough about the bumblebee. We sort of know the basics of the bumblebee life cycle, but not enough about it to do these sorts of in-depth. Investigations into what may be leading to the decline of some of these species. Does that make sense? Do I? I don't want to, yeah.

Speaker 1

It could be. We always theorize ohh. The Queens didn't establish or ohh the colonies collapsed, but we don't. It's black.

Speaker 2

Box. Yeah, that's exactly right. And so. So, we don't have that information as a conservation biologist, it's hard to conservation actions. It's, you know, someone said at the meeting, I think it was Elizabeth, Cron said. It's quite possible that by just putting flowers out of the landscape we may not even be reversing the clients. We may just be slowing them down some. You know, and so just putting flowers out. May not be. The true answer. Like if the pinch point isn't the. Availability of flowers. In others, the pinch point is the availability of nesting sites or the availability of overwintering sites. We should be focusing there instead of just putting flowers on the ground, but we don't know that basic biology about almost any species of bumblebees, and so I was in an in a meeting with John Mola, who's a. Who's now a postdoc at USGS, and we just came up with this kind of hair-brained idea to just get a bunch of people to go out on a day and go this. And just kind of as a joke, we were like, let's do it, you know, and of course, we sort of announced it in front of the group as a joke, but afterward, Sam Drogi, who also worked for the USGS, said.

Speaker

You guys should do this.

Speaker 2

And so, it was at dinner. Last night Sidney Cameron gave a really fantastic. During the keynote talk, we were all getting together and getting excited and throwing names around. We were going to call it all these different things and so Queen Quest was the name that we came up with. And so yeah, we that night I think on my phone. I bought the URL. Inquest. Other work? We're like we're. Going to do this, and of course, I got home back to the US, and I like it. And of course, someone had already used the name for something else. But it's a colleague of mine. So. So, Doug Golick's at the University of Nebraska and Lincoln, and he has this thing called Bumble Boosters. And they started a Queen quest last year. That was actually a couple of years ago. That was actually looking for trying to track the emergence of Queens across North America. Not so. Not Queens overwintering, but. The emergence of queen, so anyway I contacted him, and I said, hey, we've got this idea. We'd love to use Queen Quest, you know? Do you want to join? The team and he was like. Yeah, let's do it. So, when we had our team, it's so, so it's Lee Richardson that you've. Yeah, me. It's there seeing John, USGS, and Sam, Jody at USGS. And Doug, like at UNL and so yeah, we built a website and put together a protocol and we announced it just kind of low key on Twitter using a lot of the attendees at Bombus to sort of amplify the message. And you know, the response has been great. We've got, I think 30 or 40 people teams have signed up across North America to go out and look for overwintering Queens and.

Speaker 1

I want to do this now, so how? Do I how to do it?

Speaker 2

I do this. Yeah, you can do it by yourself. It's we're encouraging people to form teams just because honestly, the chances of you actually finding one of these are probably pretty slim. And so, you know, getting a group together to go out in the cold or the wet. And just go out and basically, we're asking people to sort. Of keeping track of. How much area they're looking for, but you're basically going to just be raking through? You know, maybe the top three to five centimeters of dirt or leaf litter or whatever it happens to be, where you choose to look and basically slowly go through this material and look for over and turn Queens. And then we want to document what species we're finding, what kind of materials we're finding them in, and then what? Sort of. The surrounding habitat is like, are you in a forest? Are you on the edge? Are you on an N-facing slope? Are you on a west-facing slope? These sorts of gross things? Like I said, we just don't know that much about where Queens are over winter and it's how they spend half their life, right? So, we don't. Know half of their life cycle basically.

Speaker 1

And it's just.

Speaker 2

We are very.

Speaker 1

You talked to Bumblebee researchers in these hibernacula like, mysterious, there's like. A lore around like.

Speaker 2

Yeah, everybody has a theory about what? It is and. But we don't actually have data to back a lot of that up. So, so much of our knowledge of these things is like papers that were published in the 1950s about what somebody observed, right? And that's like, that's all we know. And so, there's a lot to learn out there. And so, there's some guidance on the website about like. A lot of these. Anecdotal reports that you and I are just talking about, we've sort of listed those and compiled those to sort of. You know where. It might be a good place to look, but we also don't want to limit people too. Just those areas because. It could be there somewhere else that we just haven't even looked so.

Speaker 1

OK, so the website we will have it on. The show notes.

Speaker 2

But it's Queen, Queen quest.org queen. Dot org there's a place where you can sign up. There's the protocol listed. There there's a. Frequently asked questions, portion, and then the data submittal portion Portal is also.

Speaker 1

And so just so people know right back at. In the lab, I'm cleaning out Osmia. And so those bees. Are asleep. A bumblebee queen is not, but what's? What? When you uncover what does she? She awakens. She kind of likes it.

Speaker 2

She will probably not be awake at first, but there's a pretty good chance that you will wake her up in this process, and so, you know, we're encouraging people to rebury them and then that's why we want people to go through really slowly, is if you do find one, you know, we want to try to not disturb them if we can.

Speaker 1

But Queens, just in terms of basic biology, we know Queens don't go into a very deep that's right station period. That's right.

Speaker 2

Yeah, like a state of torpor. So, their body sort of shuts down. Again, not that much is known about it, but I mean, they're not that deep asleep. They will probably wake up if it's warm enough and other conditions are appropriate.

Speaker 1

OK. Glad that it just goes to show these kinds of opportunities for people to get together and generate some really great ideas. Great people get together. Think about these things all the time. You sort of make.

Speaker 2

Connections and yeah, and I think one of the one of. The other thing that spurred this is this idea.

Speaker

That like.

Speaker 2

So much of the research that is conducted in all forms of biology happens. A lot of it happens to graduate students or early career professionals, and so there's a because the culture and I don't, you don't need to get into this. But because of the culture is to publish papers and that's how success is. Measured like a. Lot of these studies are set. You want to have a. Positive result, in your study, right? You want to develop. A study and run a project that's going to find a lot of positives. That you can. Publish that it's harder to publish like I didn't find anything here and so like it's unlikely that a graduate student might take on a project like this because the chances of success are so low and so, you know, just getting a bunch of people together to just do this. And using the power of community scientists really makes a lot of sense. We can spread out across North America and cover a. Lot of ground and we're likely. To get a lot of. Zeros, right? A lot of people. Are likely to be. I went and looked. And I didn't find anything, but that information is so in. Certain, but unless there's a way to set it up and gather the information systematically, we're never going to gather it. So anyway.

Speaker 1

Yeah, let's take a quick break and I want to come back and talk about another initiative that Zorses is heading up around that uses volunteers.

Speaker 2

That sounds great.

Speaker 1

To gather data, the Pacific Northwest Bowl will be.

Speaker 2

OK, that sounds great.

Speaker 1

Hey, we're. OK. So Pacific Northwest Bumblebee Atlas has been going for two years just for listeners. Who has not? It's if you're in the region, it's hard. I'm sure you've heard of it, but just give us a brief outline of what the project is about.

Speaker 2

Yeah, we'll get it. Goes back to this idea that we're sort of lacking basic information about these animals. So, we know how many species are around in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. But we don't. Really know specifics about what habitats are important or whose plans they're using, and here at services you know we get requests all the time to help people, whether it's in their backyard or the 10,000 acres that they manage for the Forest Service, they want to manage habitat for pollinators. More bumblebees because we know that some of them are in trouble and I as a practitioner want to be able to give people evidence-based recommendations. And the evidence that I have right now, while it's pretty good, I know that. It could be. Better and also as a conservation biologist. I. Told you earlier that we're trying to. Track populations of bumblebees to see what their extinction risk is, to see how they're doing our populations increasing or decreasing, and the insects we just have. Honestly, we have very little. The idea we have to speculate oftentimes. And so, we came up with this idea with a bunch of different partners, including, you know, the Oregon V project, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to take those three states, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho and divide them up into equal area good sales. And then we wanted to recruit community scientists or volunteers to go out and conduct these effort-based surveys so that we can get information about what species are living where, what the habitats are like, and how many of them we find out there. And so, there's. We did this and launched it last year. I think there's a close. To 500 grid cells in those three states, and we've asked people to adopt A good sale and go out and sample these areas. So that's sort of the general idea of the project.

Speaker 1

And just connecting back with what you were talking about earlier, the reason that this kind of survey approach of gritting the state out and having that set protocol is so important is you were talking about trying to figure out. Which bumblebees are in trouble that you really do need this data that's done in a very systematic way?

Speaker 2

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So, for my work with the ICBM, which we talked about earlier, we had to go back, find out where, you know, species once lived, and try to gather plant association. And we had to do that because that's the best available data out there, right? That's how we know where these animals live because people collected them and put them on pins and a museum and what a treasure trove of information going back hundreds of years. So, thank goodness people were doing that. However, all of that data was not collected for assessment. The information we're using for it now. We have no idea. Like, yeah.

Speaker 1

Why do they expect how long they collected?

Speaker 2

Yeah. What they were doing, what their goals were, whether they were just trying to find rare things or us. Often have no. Idea what the goals were. So. So yeah, having these systematic surveys gives us a really clear baseline of snapshot and time. Of where things are now, with an idea of how much effort and what kind of survey methods went into it so that we can track that and, in the future, we can repeat this or a similar survey and see what things look like, have things change. Have we found species in areas where they weren't ones you know, never found them? Are there many more species or fewer of them? We'll actually be able to know that moving into the future with these effort-based systematic surveys.

Speaker 1

And it's really exciting that this started in the Pacific Northwest like this is probably a model that other states are looking at. But we had the great fortune of being of it. Starting here. Tell us a little bit about how they do and it's it. We're only two years into it. Tell us a little bit about how year 2 compared to year one we had a previous episode for listeners to go back to the here year one but how was that standing up a brand-new program? Into the second year. What was that like?

Speaker 2

Yeah. I guess before we do that, I just want to take it. One step back and ask you. That so, so Vermont did the first sort of community science-based Atlas that was run by the Vermont Center for Eco Studies. And I don't. I don't want to. So, I don't want to pretend that this is. This is me. Yeah. And then the main has.

Speaker 1

Part of Canada.

Speaker 2

Launched the. Another program and then Elaine. Evans in Minnesota has been doing some of that. This as well. So yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1

The first one in the West.

Speaker 2

There you go. That's. I think we can. First one West of the Rockies. For sure, but I. I just want because I learned a lot from them, so I don't. I just want to acknowledge them. Up front if I. Can do that. No, absolutely. Yeah. To do that. Yeah. And if I left anybody out. Ohh, I think Doug Bullock also in Nebraska made an effort, bumble boosters were. So, science-based?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I'm in 5th. That's something we must have on the show. I'm doing a lot of stuff in Nebraska, and I always hear about it, and you know that Queen Quest was associated with them as well. I must get him on.

Speaker 2

The show. Yeah, we just partnered with him to launch a Nebraska bumblebee at the list in 2019, its first season, and I could share some anecdotal information, but Katie Lamke is a 0. She's an employee. And she's sort of spearheading that. But Doug is her sort of Copilot and is running that. Objects, so yeah.

Speaker 1

OK. All right. So, your second year was not it, it was already built on the shoulders of other initiatives that started here but are still running a program for two years. You learn stuff in your second year from the first year. How?

Speaker 2

That's right. That's right.

Speaker 1

But what was coming into the second year like? Tell us a. little bit about it.

Speaker 2

Well, I mean, I think one of the things. That we learned in. Year one was that people love. Bumblebees, you know it was it was. An easy sell. For a lot of people like we did. A bunch of training. All over the region in 2018 and.

Speaker 1

I remember this year you went you let Bevan and Burns. You were really focusing on the east part of. The state guesthouse.

Speaker 2

Yeah, we were trying to for Oregon, we. We're trying to focus on that. Kind of the whole but. Everywhere that we've LED a workshop, they've sold out. Like we can.

Speaker

But we're.

Speaker 2

I don't want to say we're knocking people away with a stick, but I mean. It's like they are. Often sells like we feel like we're, you know, we're selling at a concert. Or something like that. This is a lot. Of these spots for these workshops are filling. Up very quickly and you know it's created. It's created some demand. But thankfully, you know, like if people can't. Attend a workshop we actually have. Resources available on the website. People can get training.

Speaker 1

Oh, and they're very comprehensive. Yeah, a lot of videos, a lot of everything is laid out really well. So, if you, even if you work.

Speaker 2

Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1

To go to a training, you could pick it.

Speaker 2

Up, yeah, but, as we mentioned before, just talking about Bombas like being in the same room with a group of the same people that are on the same path is powerful, right? Things happen in these in-person events that don't happen when you're at home watching a video on your computer, right? So, there is something about being in the room, but if you can't make it. You know you can use the resources on the website, and we definitely encourage people to do that to get involved. Yeah. So. In 2018, we. We really learned that. People love bumblebees and you know we can create this network of people that are out there doing great things and collecting great information. And so yeah, we. We were really successful in 2018. We collected a ton of data. But we still have this problem of collecting most of our information in population, high population density centers, right? So, like close to Portland and close to Seattle and close to busy like we those are the good cells that filled up fastest. And we collected the most information. So, what 20/19 was all about? Really sort of pushing people outside of those population centers, encouraging them to get out into the remote parts of our beautiful region and collect this information and so on. So yeah, we did almost all of our workshops this year sort of east of the Cascade Crest. We did one in Spokane; we did one in Burns and Idaho Falls. And so those were our goals, which are to try to get people engaged in those more remote areas of the region.

Speaker 1

Tell us a little bit about it. What they found.

Speaker 2

Well, we were able to do that like. We, Washington are basically almost completely covered, so the whole state of Washington has been surveyed at this point, which is spectacular. There's still a little bit of sort of gaps to fill. We'll get towards that as we move towards 2020, but Washington is really well covered. Idaho is quite well covered except for this very southern portion of the state, which has a very low population density and is sort of a sage step kind of really dry habitat. So, there's kind of a gap there. And then southeastern Oregon is also a bit of a gap still. We're still struggling to get surveys out in that portion.

Speaker 1

When we're talking southeast. Oregon, we're talking Harney and Mel here.

Speaker 2

Counties. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're big counties and they're so, yeah, the area around Steens Mountain. And we did do training and burns, and we had, you know, I think 30 people came to that training, which you know, that's a lot of people. So. And, you know, we did get some surveys out there, but there are a lot of.

Speaker

OK.

Speaker 1

The big counties.

Speaker 2

There's a lot of you. Know the area that still needs to be.

Speaker 1

OK, so tell us a. little bit about some of the findings from this year, and how they compare with awe.

Speaker 2

Have more data? Yeah. So, we collected about 6000 records in 2018. We got a 6000 bumblebee record. In 2019, we got 8000 Bubble records. Yeah. So, about a 30% increase. So, my eyes are going cross-eyed as I try to identify a lot of these and get better coverage. Yeah. So, we're. We've filled it. In a lot of the gaps, which is fantastic, and also another really exciting finding is we added in 2019. We added two species to that. We didn't have any in 2018 as well. Yeah, well, I think we knew we had them in the region, but they weren't documented in the alley, so they hadn't been documented in several years.

Speaker

So, the species that.

Speaker 1

Probably that we didn't know we had in the region.

Speaker 2

In the state, one of them is Bombas Cubellis, which if you're following. Along at home and. Bumblebees of North America is actually listed as Bumbags Balteus in that book. The name has since changed because of CO1 bar codes and whatever it is that Paul Williams is. I shouldn't say that. Paul Williams does fantastic work, and he has sort of reorganized the alpine Bombus, the subgenus Alpina bambus, and Kubias is separate from Mamas Baltierra, so it's got a new name, but that species was found in far northern Washington, basically on the British Columbia border. At high elevation.

Speaker 1

What's its known range? Where is it usually?

Speaker 2

So, it's mostly like a.

Speaker 1

Rocky Mountain.

Speaker 2

No, it's actually even it's like a high tundra species like far northern Canada, Alaska, it's pretty common up there in the Yukon, but it does follow down the spine of the Rockies. So, like, there are populations sort of down the spine of the Rockies and then it's sort of skips from basically the far northern Cascades. And then there's a population in the Sierra that we. Know about. Yeah. And so. But now after finding it this this summer and I should. Say that that I. Got photos of Don Ralphs? Who's a? You know, Don. Yeah. So, he's the one who first found Kirby Ellis in this location. And far Northern Washington and. Told me about it but. I wanted to document it as part of. Survey and in the in. The in the Atlas so. Got back up their and.

Speaker 1

So that's the first one.

Speaker 2

Yeah. The second one is about this frigidus, which is another species just known from really high elevations, colder areas. So yeah, we documented both of those two species, both in Washington. Yeah. And so, you know.

Speaker 1

In Washington. OK.

Speaker 2

I was talking about. Like so it exists in in British Columbia pretty commonly. And then in the Sierra. So, I'm now interested in, like surveying these high volcano spots between sort of British Columbia and California to see if indeed, you know, we find that like on Mount Hood and Mount Jefferson. And is it on these high elevations sort of skipping stones? On the way down to the Sierra. So that's a question I have for 2020 and hopefully get and do some more high elevation surveys, you know, like so many people have contributed to this work and it's just great to see. Like so many people putting in the effort to gather this information, super exciting.

Speaker 1

If I remember last year, there were some surprising trends. I have to John back to that conversation. I remember I thought it was there were some bees that were Western news. That was moving.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah. We got Rosinski in. Idaho last year. Which is super cool. We didn't get it again, but it is still like pushing further east. From what? Like if again. If you're following. At home, then bumblebees off. North America like. It seems that that species runs further E than trends in that book, like there's more records. To the east, which is really neat, and this year actually I just identified A bombas van Dyken eye, which is a very similar species to Bozenski, also from much further E than it had previously been recorded. So that species maybe has a bigger range. Then we thought. From before as well.

Speaker 1

One of the big. For this region, one of the focuses. OK. We're a number of hobbies that we are concerned about, occidentalis. And so, and I tell us a little bit. About what? We've learned in 2019, above those beans.

Speaker 2

Yeah. For the house we seem to be filling in some gaps. So, like. East of the rocks. I'm sorry, east of the cascade. Sierra Crest and so for those of you that don't live in the region, like the Cascades run north to South about 60 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean is, you know, it's a rough guide. As to what the? Cascade Sierra Crest is so once the western probably was sort of found throughout this region, but since the late 1990s, that species basically has disappeared West of the Cascades. Here at Crest, there are some records on the Olympic Peninsula and a few records near Seattle, but for the most part, that species, which was once pretty common. In this area, like the Portland area, has completely disappeared from here and that still seems to be the. Case we don't have any new. Records West of the Cascade Sierra Crest, unfortunately, but east of the South Cascades here, Crest and West of the Rockies like it's quite a few places like there are a lot of records of that species, which is encouraging like it mbe. I mean, it's hard to know again, we don't have the baseline surveys to compare it to, but. We're finding it in a. Lot of places not at when we do find it, it seems to be like one or two individuals, so it's not at the sort of relative abundance that it probably once was, but we're finding it a lot of places, which is really exciting. And in 2019, we found it in quite a few more locations than we did in 2018, partially because we have people out sampling in these under sampled areas.

Speaker 1

That's the issue. One could interpret it as a recovery, but you never looked before, so it could be this is just where these populations have retreated.

Speaker 2

To be exact, and that's one of the problems I think with these sorts of IUCN analysis that we have done is that we. Sort of. Have when? You don't see a dot on a map. We sort of infer that it's not there, but the reality is, is that it could be that no one's ever looked, you know. And so those two things are very different. And so, assuming absences by lack of points on a map is a, you know, it's a big assumption to make. And you know, we're helping to fill in some of those. Caps and the. Cool thing is, especially with occidentalis. There's a woman whose name is Tabitha Graves, who again is at the USGS. She's doing some occupancy modeling for occidentalis to try that because that.

Speaker 1

That term before, but I don't. Understand what it is.

Speaker 2

Well, it's basically this idea that you can use presence points to find. Areas where you're likely to find it. If you go. Look for it if that makes sense.

Speaker 1

So, it's kind of like you saw it there before. It's occupying that space; you see it again and that the rate at which you don't see it again tells you some.

Speaker 2

About where else you might find it. Yeah, I mean that's. A I'm not doing it justice, and I'm not an occupancy modeler. So, if you. You should talk to Tabatha. Tabatha. You. Should have her on. The on the podcast because she she'd be great. But anyways, so this a lot of these data are going to like to go into that model which is going to help inform. So, the Fish and Wildlife Service has been petitioned to list that species as endangered. The western bumblebee, and so these data that people are collecting right now are being plugged into Tabitha's model, which is going to help inform that process. Yeah. So, it's super, super cool. People are like. Really contributing to conservation, science and a real like sort of concrete, measurable way, which is super. Neat, you know.

Speaker 1

Another species that we are paying attention to is Morrisons on the east side. How did?

Speaker 2

Yes, you know, we didn't see nearly as many of that species this year as we. Did last year do so? Hard to say. Although we do have a record and I haven't actually looked at it. The bubbles of West or north, or bubbles in North America, Brooke since. But just yesterday I verified a record from South Central Oregon like just east of the Cascade Crest. And I like east of Ashland, basically on the other side of the Cascades. Ashland and I he a suspicion that that. May be a fairly. New location for that species, although there are a few records in Northern California, like a handful of spattering. Of them but. We'd never seen it there before in our study, so that was a new location for that species.

Speaker 1

Yes. The last question I want to ask you is what's next for Pacific Northwest Bowl will be Atlas? I think there's in Oregon, the funding has run out and there's still funding and other Pacific Northwest states that we have, Nebraska tells us a little bit about what's on the horizon.

Speaker 2

For. Yeah, so after two years. You know we've. We've covered a lot of the three-state area. We're committed to trying to finish Oregon even though the funding has run out. So, we're going to, we're going to sort of plot forward. We've gotten some assistance from the Forest Service and the BLM because they're super interested in this data. Also, and so we've identified from the first two years of surveys, there are still areas that have not been well sampled. So, we're going to really target and put out a map sometime in the next. I don't want to. Move or sell something, but sometime in the next couple of months, we're going to put a map out that says, hey, we need your help, and we need you to come here. It's not going to be sort of a wide range ask anymore, but really specific goods sales that we need to get people to go out to just to sort of finish in Oregon, Idaho, and Washington, so. Our hope is to spend 2020 cleaning up and finishing up the complete Atlas so that we can actually publish a sort of statewide Atlas and understanding of where we are in those three states. So that's really the goal is to clean up the great work that's been done. We've made tremendous progress, but there's still some areas that we have to finish and we're going to. I need some help to do that.

Speaker 1

I suppose the other question that people might have been these sounds like something that should be done across the country. There should be some kind of. Survey of the state of bumblebees. Given our concern about them and others, be generous.

Speaker 2

With, with funding would help.

Speaker 1

So, this really there is no. Kind of federal funding. For something like.

Speaker 2

As I understand it, there's currently no federal effort for monitoring and, you know, I think, but there should be right. And that is actually one of the big things that came up at. At the bottom, this meeting is that there is a need for not just a national, but an international monitoring net. Work that's standardized like so. You know, I even I I'm totally. At fault of this? But like I mentioned, there's efforts in Vermont and Maine and Minnesota and Wisconsin going on right? Now and we. All have similar but different methods, right? So, like we can compare our results but. You know, it would be better if we were all just doing the same thing. If we established a nationwide monitoring network. But I, you know, I think with the expertise and the and the tools that we've developed at this point, I think we could do it; I think. The bar for setting. Up and allowing people to go. Out and do these standardized surveys. I think it's a I think it's a reasonable ask. I think it's a reasonable goal. That is the pinch point right now. It is doing you. Know getting someone to look at the photos and to verify the bees that we're taking photos of. You know, I had to do close to 8000 of them this year. Yeah. Which is that that's a lot of photos to look at. And you know if we were to expand that to 50. Or 49 states there's no bumblebees in Hawaii. Plus, you know them. Canadian territories and provinces like we're going to get. A lot more than that. You know, and so finding them. People that have that are that are funded. That that can sit down in front of a. Computer and verify those photos is. A. You know that's a pinch point right now. We don't have I. Don't think I would. Personally, I'd have to sit for way too many hours to do the entire continent. So, I would need it. A lot of help and. So, one of the cool things actually. That's also coming. Out of this is. So now we have this. I think at least it is a really great database and Bumblebee watch of like verified expert verified. At least I hope I'm an expert. Verified photos that now there's a bunch of people that are interested in using our data set to actually use machine learning to train basically computer to at least do a first cut at these photos. That was another. Thing that came up like got at Bombus is like that would be really helpful. We also just need to train taxonomists, right? Like, so a lot of funding, a lot of universities are cutting entomology programs. Terms and you know we there are not that many be taxonomists in the in the continent as I'm sure you are very aware. And we're all. Getting older so also that's another thing is we need to train taxonomists.

Speaker 1

Thank you for appearing in the. Crystal ball and giving us a forecast and some of the. Path forward and also thank you so much for making time to update us on this really amazing initiative. The two initiatives multiply every time I come down.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah. We didn't really get to talk about Nebraska, but we'll be out this, so you know which, which just which just started so.

Speaker 1

Give us a give us a quick. Over we had to get started and what's its charge? How?

Speaker 2

Yeah, similar charge, you know? So, Nebraska actually has a real kind of amazing long history of doing bumblebee atlases that there have been systematic surveys that have done there. Yeah, I think Laberge and Webb did one in the 50s or 60s. That's where they were, I think. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so then, you know, that was repeated again by the Bumble boosters' program with Doug Golick. And so, this will be the third effort, really. And so, we'll be able to time series of data.

Speaker 1

Kapoor. See people.

Speaker 2

For all these defenses. Issues. Yeah. And it's, you know, Nebraska is also a very interesting it's. Positioned kind of right in the middle of the country. And so, it has some eastern species. It has some western species and it's also just a very interesting state from a population density perspective, like almost all of the population is in the eastern, like fifth of the state. And then the Western 4/5 of the state. Or just this diversity of sort of row crops. But also, the Sand Hill regions and then in the far western part of the state, there's some really unique natural areas as well. So anyway, lots of sort of biologically interested and key biologically areas that we're interested in sampling and gathering more information from and we yeah, we just got launched we got started kind. Of late this year. Really started in July of 2018 but ran a couple of trainings and trained. 60 or 70. Maybe even 80. People in person and ended ungathering to 700 Bumblebee records just in the last couple of months. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Speaker

Sounds great.

Speaker 2

And I think there's sixty grid cells or something like that in Nebraska and we sampled them. I want to say 20 of them. So almost a third, you know, we covered almost a third of the state. Just in that short period of time so. Again, people love them. All these and I think you know 2019 is going to or 2020 excuse me. It's going to be a great year. In Nebraska to finish gathering that information there, I'm feel lucky to be a part of it and thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1

Thank you so much for listening. The show is produced by Clemson and Neil. Who's a student? Here at OSU in the new media communications program, and the show wouldn't even be possible without the support of the Oregon Legislature. The Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research in Western Zaire show notes with links mentioned on each episode are available on the website, which is. At Hollow Nation podcast. Dot oregonstate.edu. I also love hearing from you, and there's several ways to connect with me. The first one is you can visit the website and leave an episode specific comment. You can suggest a future guest or topic or ask a question that can be featured in a future episode, but you can do the same things on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook for visiting the Oregon Bee Project. Thanks so much for listening. And see you next week.