WebBee A platform for a Brazilian information network on bees. Inter-American Workshop on Environmental Data Access 3-6 March 2004 – Campinas - Brazil

Universidade de São Paulo Antonio Mauro Saraiva –Escola Politécnica/ Agricultural Automation Lab Vera Lucia Imperatriz Fonseca –Instituto de Biociências / BeeLab

outline WebBee: From instrumentation to an information network

Start: instrumentation in 1999, research on flight activity of stingless bees focus on automatic data acquisition –to get more and better data –to free the researchers from some time consuming and error-prone activities.

Bee hives monitored for Air temperature Air humidity Bee flux: “Bee detector” –I.R. emitter-detector pair

a web-based monitoring system

Bee count: flight activity concentrated in the morning

A step ahead: an information system Knowledge and information on bees need to be –organized, preserved, shared, published(!) Target audience –scientists, beekeepers, students, teachers, policy makers, agricultural producers… Increase public awareness on the importance and uses of pollinators –in Portuguese and other languages

WebBee: information system Contents: Bee species data: biology, taxonomy, distribution, Hives, equipment & numerical data Beekeeping, plants visited Bibliography Information source: Intellectual Property –Dynamic web pages: database –Multimedia: texts, images, videos Web–based: easy access and sharing

System Diagram WeB Bee MySQL Server PHP HTTP Server WEB browser Maintenance program ODBC FTP Server Linux Server DB

WeB Bee Software Platform Operating system Database MS Dynamic Pages Graphics Linux MySQL PHP Graphics library GD WEB Server Apache

Database – Species catalog WebBee images and texts

Database – Weather station (at IB – USP, São Paulo) WebBee graphics and table

Database of Bibliography WebBee Documents: description and files (PDF; DOC, etc)

Replicate WebBee Do other groups have similar needs and problems? WeB Bee   Does a single group have enough data to populate the system? How much time would it take? Do they have other data?

WebBee - a network Groups cooperate on providing data –Species information –Experimental data / weather stations –By region, species, family… Distributed Effort –less work for each –Each is part of solution WeB Bee

WebBee - a network Important issues: Intellectual property –Contents: texts, photos, etc  author –neutral domain: WebBee: consortium –partners –credit –management WeB Bee

Status Centralized database Remote data-entry Other features: –plants visited (names, few images) –pollen characteristics –5 groups (4 bee groups)

Participants: BeeLab – Instituto de Biociências da USP Agricultural Automation Lab – Escola Politécnica - USP Embrapa Amazônia Oriental BeeLab - Empresa Baiana de Desenvolvimento Agrícola – EBDA Universidade Est. de Feira de Santana - UEFS WeB Bee

Brazilian Pollinators Initiative (BPI) website events publications timeline activities

What is next ? Improve content: –populate database –other groups –other languages Data validation / referee Interoperability/interconnection with other information systems –DiGIR –Partnership with CRIA WeB Bee

Thank you ! Visit us at:

Number of species in the database (N=38) NestEntranceDroneQueen (virgin) Worker Pending: obtain the missing images Species from Bee Laboratory IB/USP collection