Think you can spot the difference between and a honey bee and a bumble bee? Well, there’s one day left to test your bee knowledge with the online Bee Challenge, brought to you by the folks at the Great Pollinator Project!

A collaboration between the Greenbelt Native Plant Nursery and the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, the Great Pollinator Project calls upon citizen scientists to help  researchers better understand the 200 species of bees that live  in New York City by observing and recording data on bees in their urban backyards, community gardens, or rooftops.  Why? For one thing, declines in certain bee populations may be affecting food production. Pollination–a primary function of bees–contributes to one-third of our food (fruits and vegetables)!

Looking for a great way to contribute to science while becoming an “A” Bee Student? Why not participate in the Great Pollinator Project?

Recently, my pal at Live Science.com, Dave Brody, produced this video news piece about the results of a fascinating experiment involving fireflies.

Scientists at the University of Connecticut have discovered that males in a common species of fireflies synchronize their flashing patterns to attract females. In dense fields or woods, the mass, synchronized flashing patterns make it easier for females to spot and recognize this mating call. Females then mimic the pattern back to the males to signal an interest in mating.

“There have been lots of really good observations and hypotheses about firefly synchrony,” Andrew Moiseff of the University of Connecticut, lead author of the study, told Life’s Little Mysteries. ”But until now, no one has experimentally tested whether synchrony has a function.”

Over at the Boston Museum of Science, researchers are calling on you to help them solve the mystery of the Photinus pyralis  (the j-shaped flasher) to understand why they seem to be increasingly attracted to urban street lights. Join their Firefly Watch and combine scientific research with an annual summer evening ritual!

On the radio today: California Academy of Sciences' Bay Area Ant Survey

“Everybody have ants?”

That’s Kelly Herbinson, an entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences, training high school students in the art of collecting ants for the Bay Area Ant Survey, one of the Academy’s citizen science projects. (You’ll find a description in our Project Finder.)

The project and the problem ant that participants most often encounter–the invasive Argentine ant–were the subject of a radio story today by our friends at Quest, a science program produced by the San Francisco public radio affiliate KQED.

According to the report, the tiny black Argentine ant, originally brought to this country in coffee shipments during the 1890s, has created one enormous colony that stretches from Oregon to Mexico. That’s a lot of ants! The Argentine ants have pushed out native ants, caused problems with crops, and led to the decline of the coast horned lizard, which eats only native ants. But now, as Lauren Sommer reports, researcher Neil Tsutsui at the University of California at Berkeley is working to develop chemicals based on the ants’ natural pheromones that will trigger aggressive behavior and cause the ants to turn on each other. (Listen to the full story.)

Bay Area citizen scientists can help by contributing to the Academy’s Ant Survey. Ants collected by participants are identified, and their identity and location are added to AntWeb, a visual database of the world’s10,000 species of ants. So far, more than 800 citizen scientists have collected 34 different species of ants in the region. Everybody got ants?

The mission blue butterfly is back home in San Francisco, thanks to science volunteers. (photo by the National Park Service)

One of the loveliest butterflies in the San Francisco Bay Area is the mission blue. Hikers who venture south of the city to San Bruno Mountain or north to the Marin Headlands are sometimes lucky enough to encounter the iridescent, inch-wide insect (as I did a couple of weekends ago).

But the butterfly, an endangered species since 1976, has all but disappeared from the city itself, mostly because development and El Nino-related storms have wiped out the lupine flowers it needs to survive.

Now, with the help of volunteers, lupines and the butterfly have been restored to the Twin Peaks area of San Francisco.

Over the last several years, volunteers and staff with the city Recreation and Parks department’s Natural Areas Program collected lupine seed from San Bruno Mountain and planted it on Twin Peaks, returning repeatedly to nurture the lupines and clear away non-native plants that would have choked out the flowers. Last year, after deciding the lupines were firmly established, the city got permission from the feds to capture pregnant mission blues on San Bruno Mountain and transport them to Twin Peaks. Just a few weeks ago, naturalists swarmed Twin Peaks to check for this year’s offspring, and there they were—thriving mission blue butterflies, back at home.

Here’s to all the science volunteers who make time to tend our planet!

Great Sunflower Project: Study bees on sunflowers.

Doesn’t spring make you antsy to go outside, get moving, and act all scientific? (Or maybe those are real ants you’re feeling—this season does bring out all sorts of little critters.) If you’re craving more, even after our earlier list of suggestions, here are another five projects to help you scratch that springtime citizen science itch.

The Great Sunflower Project: Some bee populations are in decline, and you can work with scientists to track and study the trends. Plant sunflower seeds, observe the activity on your blossoms, send in your data—and enjoy the bonus of a cheerful new corner of your garden.

Habitat Stewards: Get trained by the National Wildlife Federation, then help people create and restore wildlife habitats in their communities.

North American Bird Phenology: Help scientists understand the effect that global climate change has had on bird populations across North America by converting information from historic, hand-written “Migration Observer Cards” to a form that can be used in modern databases.

Spider WebWatch: Be an amateur arachnologist.

Spider WebWatch: Join this biodiversity monitoring effort for biologists, naturalists, educators, students, and anyone else with a strong interest in spiders. From more than 4,400 species of spiders in North America, nine were chosen as eight-legged ambassadors. Learn to identify them, submit your sightings, and discuss your findings with fellow arachnologists.

Lakes of Missouri: As a volunteer, you’ll be provided with equipment and training so that you can collect and process lake water quality samples, record temperatures, and measure water clarity. Not in Missouri? No problem. There are many more water monitoring efforts like this in other parts of the country.

You can find lots of projects like these by searching our Project Finder in such categories as Birds, Insects, Nature & Outdoors, and Ocean & Water. Now get out there and enjoy the season and the science!

To get us all in the mood to celebrate the start of Firefly season, check out Owl City’s Fireflies music video.

The Museum of Science, Boston, kicks off each year of its Firefly Watch citizen science project with a day-long celebration in honor of everyone’s favorite insect and the volunteers who help monitor their populace so researchers can learn more about these fascinating little buggers. This year, the official Firefly Watch season starts on April 24th!

If you are in the Boston, MA, area, visit the Museum of Science and enjoy special presentations from firefly scientists and a host of children’s activities. No worries if you can’t make it to the Museum. Sci4Cits has partnered with the Museum of Science to present a contest! Between now and May 7th, create a Sci4Cits member blog (from the homepage, click on the Member Blog tab, then sign-in, to  get started) and post a picture, drawing, or video of a firefly–or any interpretation of a firefly–with a creative caption of your choosing and you will be entered into a random drawing. Five winners will receive a Museum of Science T-shirt AND have their blog post  featured on the homepage of ScienceForCitizens.net.

Think it’s too early to spot a Firefly? Not so! Here’s a member blog post from Don Salvatore, the creator of the Firefly Watch, in which he describes a daylight, cold-weather tolerant, Firefly species!

Good luck. If you have any questions, just email us at info@scienceforcitizens.net and we’ll help you get started with your very own Member Blog post.

California Poppy, by Brother Alfred Brousseau, USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database (Project Budburst)

Now that spring has sprung in the Northern Hemisphere, Mother Nature is tempting winter-weary citizen scientists out of doors with all kinds of colorful, action-packed events. Buds are bursting forth, chatty bird couples are flirting and building nests, and the excitable atmospheric conditions of the new season are conjuring up fresh cloud patterns in the sky.

We did some cherry-picking from our Project Finder and collected five springtime activities that will get you out in the fresh air communing with Nature and contributing to scientific knowledge. Below you’ll find our first five recommendations. (We’ll suggest five more next week.)

Project Budburst: Take careful note of the “phenophases” of native plants in your area: first leafing, first flowering, and first fruit ripening of trees, shrubs, flowers, and grasses. Your observations, compiled with those of many more citizen naturalists, will provide researchers with environmental and climatic data to compare with historical records.

Butterflies I’ve Seen: Add to your personal online diary of butterfly sightings and share your knowledge with the major butterfly conservation organization in North America.

Northern Cardinal (NestWatch)

Nest Watch: Help ornithologists collect information on the breeding, nesting, hatching, and fledging activity of birds around you.

Project Squirrrel: Count the number of squirrels in your neighborhood and report your findings.  At the same time you help map squirrel activity you’ll also be contributing to research on the behavior of citizen scientists!

Students’ Cloud Observations On Line (S’COOL): While you’re on a field trip, on vacation, or just hanging out in your backyard, keep an eye on the clouds. Then report your findings to NASA to help validate satellite data and add to a better understanding of the atmosphere.

Before I headed to Austin, TX  last week for the SXSW music, film, and interactive conference (I helped put together a panel discussion there on the Future of Gaming for Discover Magazine and the National Science Foundation), I Googled “citizen science in Austin” and came upon the Texas Beewatchers. The organizer of this citizen science effort, Kim Bacon, and I had the opportunity to chat about her project which originated as a simple observation effort and now challenges her fellow Texans to plant 52 “bee friendly” gardens in 52 weeks. You can read more about that, here.

Listening to Kim’s enthusiasm and genuine desire to create healthy bee habitats–coupled with news about bee colony collapses and its impact on the $14 billion worth of U.S. crops dependent upon pollinators–opened my eyes to even more recent buzz about bees. Today, in San Francisco (where I am now, meeting with the founders of the Coalition for Public Understanding of Science ), the American Chemical Society’s annual meeting featured some troubling news about bees. Christopher Mullin and his colleagues at Pennsylvania State University report that their research* demonstrates “unprecedented levels” of mite-killing chemicals and crop pesticides found in hives across the United States and parts of Canada. In this Science News article, Mullins adds: “The biological impacts of these materials at their dietary levels on other honey bee larvae or adults remains to be determined.” Some suspect these contaminants play a role in the mysterious colony collapse.

None of this sounds good for the future of honey bees, so this year I’m committing to participate in another Bee citizen science activity: The Great Sunflower Project. Simply plant and nurture sunflower seeds as directed in the ScienceForCitizens.net project description, and watch a bee pollinate roughly every 2.6 minutes! By synthesizing such observations, the organizers of this activity hope to standardize the study of bee activity while providing more resources for bees.

*The 19-page report can be found in the March PLoS ONE.

From Monarch Watch

Monarch butterflies need our help!

The regal butterflies, hit hard by the torrential February rains in Mexico, are at their lowest population levels since 1975,  according to Chip Taylor, director of Monarch Watch at the University of Kansas. The storms killed 50 to 60 percent of the breeding colonies in northern Mexico; the butterfly population was already diminished by unfavorable conditions last summer.

The monarchs are just about to start their springtime flight back to the United States and Canada. Taylor and other researchers are asking the public to help the remaining monarchs by planting the butterflies’ favored food, milkweed, along their flight path. Visit the Monarch Waystation Program for information on how to establish a milkweed plot to help these beautiful and imperiled critters.

A few weeks ago, I snapped a photo of my kids skiing in the Poconos (while I hung out in the lodge). I noticed this ladybug walking along the windowsill. A quick Google search informed me that it’s not uncommon for folks living in mountainous regions to be invested with ladybugs seeking shelter in the winter. Sure enough, after spotting this one, I found dozens more. What’s not known is why some unlikely places are becoming infested while others are witnessing a collapse of ladybug populations.

Citizen scientists: the Lost Ladybug Project needs your help to solve this mystery!

Across North America ladybug species distribution is changing.  Over the past twenty years several native ladybugs that were once very common have become extremely rare.  During this same time ladybugs from other places have greatly increased both their numbers and range.  Some ladybugs are simply found in new places.  This is happening very quickly and we don’t know how, or why, or what impact it will have on ladybug diversity or the role that ladybugs play in keeping plant-feeding insect populations low.  We’re asking you to join us in finding out where all the ladybugs have gone so we can try to prevent more native species from becoming so rare.

Find out how you can get involved. You’ll even learn how to relax a ladybug for the purpose of taking its picture. (Hint: a ladybug can be placed in a freezer for up to five minutes. True fact!) Consider sharing your experience on your very own Member Blog here on ScienceForCitizens.net (free benefit for subscribers!).