Utah Pollinator Pursuit - July Highlights
Happy August, Pollinator Pals!
July truly brought the heat, and with it, a flurry of pollinator observations from our Utah Pollinator Pursuit community.
This month, community scientists have logged an impressive 2,746 pollinator observations across the state! The fluttering of wings scaled and veined alike have been vibrant in the summer air, with bumble bees, moths, and butterfly species placing in our top five most observed pollinators in July. Our top species include Brown-belted Bumble bees, Police Car Moths, and Hunt’s Bumble bees.
You may have noticed several observations of Indiscriminate Cuckoo Bumble bees showing up on your project feed and perhaps you wondered, What’s that all about? We asked Utah Pollinator Pursuit project lead and Utah’s Rare Insect Conservation Coordinator, Amanda Barth what this says about bumble bee populations. Here’s just a snippet of what she had to say:
“The likelihood of detecting a cuckoo bumble bee depends on the success and abundance of its host species in an area, effectively making cuckoo bumble bee species indicators of the health of the local bumble bee community.
For instance, the indiscriminate cuckoo bumble bee (Bombus insularis) is less restricted to host species than other cuckoo bumble bees. They have been recorded parasitizing 6 other Utah Bombus species: white-shouldered bumble bees, golden northern bumble bees, yellow-fronted bumble bees, Nevada bumble bees, red-belted bumble bees, and even western bumble bees.
In just the last two and a half months, Utah community scientists have submitted more than 90 observations of this species around the state. For comparison, that's more than the total number of indiscriminate cuckoo bumble bee observations from 2020-2023 combined (67 in four years!). While it's a rough estimate of bumble bee community health, it can still be interpreted as a positive sign of increased resources like precipitation and flowering plants in their habitat.”
Amanda shared her thoughts (and photos!) with us in our latest blog, The Unique Lives of Cuckoo Bees. Click through to learn more about this fascinating and often misunderstood group of pollinators, and check out some of our favorite cuckoo bee observations from the Utah Pollinator Pursuit community below:
- Coelioxys sp. observed by Connie Misket;
- California Digger-cuckoo bee shared by Doug Gilbert;
- Two-banded Cellophane-cuckoo bee from Amanda Barth;
- and Matthew Mulvey’s Indiscriminate Cuckoo Bumble bee observation
Our top observer of the month (to nobody’s surprise!) was Klaus Bielefeldt with an incredible 263 observations representing 35 species, while our top identifier of the month was Amanda Barth with 594 IDs - wow! We’re also excited to highlight our June Volunteer of the Month, Parker Lloyd, who has dedicated a fair share of time to logging pollinator observations and educating the public about the importance of creating habitat for pollinators.
Thank you to everyone who takes the time to sit with nature and for sharing your observations with us! This information is vital in providing land-managers and decision makers the background they need to best prioritize the conservation of pollinators and the habitats they need to survive.
If you’re interested in getting more involved in pollinator conservation, be sure to join us at our final Pollinator Office Hours for the season, sign up for our monthly newsletter, or follow along on social media (@utahpollinatorpursuit, @sagelandcollab).
Happy Pollinator Pursuing!
The Utah Pollinator Pursuit Team
Utah Pollinator Pursuit is a cooperative project between Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Sageland Collaborative, and Utah State University. Learn more and find volunteer resources and additional opportunities to get involved at utahpollinatorpursuit.org or on the project page at sagelandcollaborative.org/plants-pollinators.
