Bee occurrence data collected in citizen science program “Hanamaru‐Maruhana national census” in Japan

Abstract

To understand bee distributions in Japan, we started the citizen science program "Hanamaru-Maruhana national census (Bumble bee national census in English)" from 2013, and collected bee photographs taken by citizens. Bee photographs were collected via e-mail or "Mobile Phone System and Cloud Services" provided by Fujitsu FIP, Co. Species were identified from photographic images, and latitude-longitude data were extracted from GPS data in Exif information of photographs or address in text of e-mail. We have confirmed all 16 bumble bee species inhabiting in the Japanese archipelago excluding the Kurile Islands, and have got 5503 records of these bumble bees. In addition, we have got 380 records of three carpenter bee species that are often mistaken for bumble bees by citizens. This occurrence data cover the time range from September 2006 to October 2018, the latitudinal range from 26.45 to 45.29 and the longitudinal range from 127.80 to 145.82. The latitudelongitude data were rounded off to two decimal places in the published dataset for protecting privacy rights of citizens. In addition, the latitude-longitude data of five rare bumble bee species/subspecies were rounded off to one decimal place for protecting their habitats. The complete data set for this abstract published in the Data Paper section of the journal is available in electronic format in MetaCat in JaLTER at http://db.cger.nies.go.jp/JaLTER/metacat/metacat/ ERDP-2021-04.1/jalter-en.

Estimating bee distributions and their functional range to map important areas for protecting bee species and their functions

“…The error range of latitude–longitude was within 500 m. The number and geographic range of bumble bee occurrence data collected in the census were greater than in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) as of April 2016 20 . The data are available in GBIF and the Japan Long-Term Ecological Research Network (JaLTER) databases 21 , although the accuracy of the latitude and longitude was reduced before publishing to protect rare species and the privacy of volunteers in the community science program.…”

“…gbif. org/ ja/ datas et/ 5f7ae ace-46b9-4516-8b1e-09650 aee90 24) 21 . The original bee occurrence data are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.…”

“…Bumble bees and honey bees are major social bees in Japan and target species for research on the relationship between their proboscis length and floral tube length. Using their occurrence data 20 , 21 and environmental data, we estimated bee distributions from an ensemble of six species distribution models (SDMs). From the estimated distributions, we mapped the areas of high species richness, those of rare species, and those of high uniqueness (as the sum of the inverse of each species’ habitat area) 22 .…”

“…The bee occurrence data at coarser coordinate resolution are available on two databases, JaLTER ( https://db.cger.nies.go.jp/JaLTER/metacat/metacat/ERDP-2021-04.1/jalter-en ) and GBIF ( https://www.gbif.org/ja/dataset/5f7aeace-46b9-4516-8b1e-09650aee9024 ) 21 . The original bee occurrence data are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.…”

Message from the new Editor‐in‐Chief

“…The second is the data paper, "Bee occurrence data collected in citizen science programme 'Hanamaru-Maruhana national census' in Japan." (Suzuki-Ohno et al, 2021). Under progressing and unprecedented rates of global warming and urbanization, the description of the current distribution of organisms within a short research period is of increased necessity and importance.…”