#780: Pollination: Collecting Bees For Provincial Biodiversity Inventory
INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY #780
Dr Jessamyn Manson is a bee researcher at the University of Alberta.
Her work for Alberta Innovates and the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute is helping to identify the diversity of Alberta’s bee population and its economic importance to agriculture.
But getting that information is quite challenging.
DR JESSAMYN MANSON: It is very time consuming. And one of the biggest challenges for our work has been not only that the sampling period itself is very time consuming and requires a lot of miles. We put thousands and thousands of miles on our trucks in the last few years. But also, after the sampling period, one of the things that we’re interested in is the diversity of species here. And to work on diversity questions, you need to have a very good understanding of taxonomy. And taxonomy is a dying art. So we’ve had to self train to identify these 180 plus species of bee, and that’s been really challenging for us, and its also incredibly time consuming. So this work in general takes a lot of time and effort in order to just get this basic knowledge.
Dr. Jessamyn Manson and her graduate students collect the bees by hand netting and by pan trapping in soapy water.
Thanks today to ALBERTA INNOVATES
LEARN MORE AT INNOVATION ANTHOLOGY.COM
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Alberta Innovates Technology Futures
Alberta Innovates launched its consolidation on November 1, 2016
780-450-5111
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Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
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Program Date: 2016-05-10