Database and digitization of bees in Thailand

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Public species occurrence database such as GBIF provides specimen geographical records for global bee distribution, which is an invaluable resource for researchers studying bee diversity and pollination ecology. However, most records are biased toward specimens collected in North America and Europe. On the contrary, bees from Southeast Asia (SEA) are poorly understood and are not well represented in public databases. The Chulalongkorn University Natural History Museum (CUNHM) in Thailand holds a collection of more than 12,000 bee specimens from 4 families across more than 500 localities in the country's 77 provinces.

The initial purpose of this project is to mobilize at least 8,000 Thai bee specimen records deposited at CUNHM and publish in GBIF. Activities include photographing specimens, assigning QR codes, transcribing labels, formatting transcription of the data to enable publication in GBIF.org, mapping species distributions, and holding a workshop to showcase and demonstrate the use of the database.

For long-term sustainability of the project, we aim to establish an accurate and reliable digital bee database for the global audience and researchers whose interest are in pollination biology, conservation, bee taxonomy, and biodiversity informatics in Southeast Asia, a lesser-known area of bee diversity. Research fields in climate change, invasive species, and ecology of pollinators will benefit from this work, since information from tropical Asia is often limited and sometimes inaccessible.

Beside producing and publishing the database to GBIF, this effort provides a template for hosting other biodiversity information hosted and stored in Thailand by the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), a partner that is providing matching funds. The processes and methods of digitization of bee records will be disseminated and shared with the country's other research collections, universities, and institutions through workshop and university lectures. Through these outreach activities, we hope to familiarize and educate audiences on how to utilize the data efficiently—both through the database and GBIF—and to persuade them the importance of pollinators to the public.

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