photo by: University of Kansas

A blue carpenter bee specimen from KU's world-leading collection of bees is shown.

The University of Kansas has won a federal grant to help its bee collection — the largest in the world — spread far and wide.

On the internet, that is.

A team led by KU scientists has won $600,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation to use artificial intelligence to help other researchers and bee aficionados around the world more easily identify different bee species.

When complete, the project will provide images to help researchers identify more than 1,000 different species of bees.

KU landed the grant, in part, because it has the bees to get the job done. KU is widely credited as having the world’s largest research bee collection. Using those specimens, KU will be able to employ artificial intelligence to capture, catalog and further organize images of thousands of different types of bees.

“This project will enhance the collection’s accessibility and its role in the discovery and study of native bee diversity,” Victor Gonzalez, principal investigator on the project and associate teaching professor in biology at KU, said via a press release.

The completed project will provide a free source of information for bee identification, which often can be time consuming and expensive, according to KU.

The NSF funding also will include a second project that focuses on climate change and bee populations in the tropics. The project will be based in Colombia and will look at how climate and landscape changes are impacting bee populations in the region.

Better understanding how bee populations are changing in tropical regions is important and understudied, Gonzales said via the press release. He said crops such as coffee and cocoa could be significantly impacted by changes in population of bees or other pollinators.

The Colombia project also will serve as a research training and mentorship program for younger scientists, KU said in the release.