Laurence Packer
Professor Laurence Packer in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, has created the first online . Almost all of the images are from his laboratory, where he houses a collection of more than 300,000 bee specimens.
鈥淲e wanted to create an online resource that anyone around the world can use, including scientists and students, to help them get an idea as to whether their identification of a bee might be correct,鈥 explains Packer. 鈥淭he tool is also a way for us to share our collection with others and showcase the incredible diversity of bees.鈥
Mesoxaea sp. Male. Image from the Packer Image Bank
He started his bee collection at 91亚色 nearly 30 years ago. The collection has now grown to be one of the most diverse in the world and the largest in Canada, representing more than 90 percent of the world鈥檚 known bee genera from more than 100 countries.
Packer and his team will continue updating and improving the image bank. He hopes to make it more interactive in the future, so that visitors to the site can click through a series of questions (for example, about the shape of the bee鈥檚 tongue or the veins on its wings) that will help them identify the genus of an unfamiliar bee more easily.
On Packer鈥檚 website there is also an , as well as that was funded by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
To see the Bee Genera of the World image bank, visit .