Brian Spiesman

Leafcutter bee visiting a pink flower to collect nectar (photo taken by Sage Handler)

New DNA metabarcoding results show the distribution of cavity nesting #bees & #wasps, & their food sources, from schools across 🇨🇦. This community science work, led by Sage Handler, reveals network links among plants, #pollinators, parasites, predators & prey doi.org/10.3897/mbmg... @mbmg.pensoft.net

Today marks the first day in public media’s history without federal funding. And we’re not going anywhere.

Listeners like you keep our mission alive. Protect one of the last places where America comes together to hear itself.

Stand with us today. Donate at this link: n.pr/46wamAj

Beemachine logo with bee saying “update time!”, along with App Store and Google Play store logos.

Make sure to get the latest update for Android and iOS! BeeMachine mobile now includes location and date in the classification process for improved accuracy. You can also share images from your image gallery straight to BeeMachine.

YouTube video by K-State Entomology Capturing Pollinator Impact | Student Story

So proud of the work done by my students in the Pollinator Ecology Lab at K-State!

World map showing a yellow map marker representing the location of a bee sighting

BeeMachine now uses 🗺️location & 📆date to improve predictions. These details allow BeeMachine to better distinguish b/w similar looking species & provide IDs that are more relevant to your area. Now active on the web & coming soon to mobile. Give it a try and let us know what you think!

I am so excited about this upcoming publication about the Bees of Pennsylvania! 🐝 Stay tuned; we will have a page online where you can purchase this book in July! @nashturley.bsky.social @napoleonicento.bsky.social @stephanidae.bsky.social

You're right. Thanks.

Yep

Congratulations!

This seems like the perfect occasion for my favorite fun fact about Volterra! From his wikipedia page:

"In 1922, he joined the opposition to the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini and in 1931 he was one of only 12 out of 1,250 professors who refused to take a mandatory oath of loyalty."

New research on how non-native honeybees alter visitation networks in a peri-urban environment. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Our group is more ag focused but I'm leading a project on deep learning for pollinator ecology and monitoring

We have this one at K-State:
www.plantpath.k-state.edu/academics/un...

Yes, they can hallucinate papers that don't exist, discuss results that seem to be imaginary, and can be confusing and inconsistent. But talking to tenured professors may still be helpful

Cool stuff!

(a) Map showing locations of 157 studies included, and the proportion of natural, agricultural, and urban habitats sampled within the study. Pie size is proportional to the number of sampled sites in each study, ranging from 1 to 368. The density plot indicates the distribution of the studied assemblages (n = 3117) along the latitudinal gradient. (b–d) Diversity changes relative to values of natural habitats, with each panel showing responses of one diversity metric: (b) α-, (c) β-, and (d) γ-diversity. Point estimates represent model predictions of each land use based on fixed effects only, while error bars are 95% confidence intervals. The estimations of α-diversity were obtained by holding other covariates at the mean or mode values. For β- and γ-diversity, the estimation reflects a standardized sampling study with all assemblages having 100% sampling completeness, and other covariates at the mean or mode values. Small letters above error bars indicate results from pairwise comparisons, with different letters representing different groups. *Indicates that the pairwise comparisons included marginally nonsignificant results (p = 0.06).

Land-use change reduces bee diversity at local scales, but the impacts of agriculture and urbanisation differ at regional scales. Agriculture has more negative effects overall. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 🧪 🌏 🌐

Please add me: pollinatorlab.com

YouTube video by MLB Kirk Gibson's legendary 1988 World Series walk-off home run, called by Vin Scully!

Rewatching this at bat - an all-timer - never fails to brighten my day.
youtu.be/N4nwMDZYXTI?...

Pretty sweet stache on this Southern Plains bumble bee. Bombus fraternus

Map bug fixed for iOS devices! Get the update in the App Store

UPDATE: BeeMachine is now available in 40 different languages!🔓🌐

Deep learning for identifying bee species from images of wings and pinned specimens One of the most challenging aspects of bee ecology and conservation is species-level identification, which is costly, time consuming, and requires taxonomic expertise. Recent advances in the applicati...

New work out today on how we can use #AI to ID some of the more challenging #bees from images of whole pinned bees and just their wings. Look for more on this soon.
@beemachine.bsky.social

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Graph showing t-SNE visualization of bee and other pollinators illustrating how learned features are grouped by taxa

t-SNE visualization of the 354 pollinator taxa in the latest BeeMachine algorithm. Each point represents a test image and clusters represent images with similar learned features. Labels are placed over the class centroid. Points are color coded by taxa.

Update to BeeMachine v1.2.6!

⚡️Important #update for BeeMachine users⚡️This update helps with "lost" sightings and with performance issues on Android devices.

If you like, check out our app BeeMachine.ai. We focus on bee species ID, but it is pretty good at differentiating bees from flies, wasps, and some other bugs.

Love that little flower, btw. I think I saw it on a visit to CO recently.

BeeMachine Update!!!

Flyer for internship applications

Undergrad summer internships available in the REEU program at K-State! Gain research experience & learn about cutting edge technology in ag/plant sciences. Lots of projects to choose from including computer vision and #AI for #pollinator monitoring.
www.plantpath.k-state.edu/academics/un...

asking for an image of a professor and asking to make it "more professor", a thread.

Their paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.4620

Insects are in dramatic decline in Colorado, 35-year-long study reveals 62% fewer insects were trapped in a meadow near Gothic, a loss correlated with less winter snowfall, less summer rain and warmer temperatures

Bad news from Gothic: 35 years of insect decline in a pristine mountain meadow. Great work by Nora Underwood & Brian Inouye (my former PhD advisers!) et al.

https://coloradosun.com/2023/08/04/climate-change-insect-decline-rmbl-gothic-colorado/