The Gardiner Lab at The Ohio State University Department of Entomology is seeking Citizen Scientists to aid in the study of insect pollination this summer! Our goal is to measure the amount of pollination provided to gardens in rural, suburban and urban landscapes. Measuring pollination is one way to gauge the health of our bee community. All that is required is a small garden space where you will be able to grow four sweet pepper plants and the willingness to follow an experimental protocol this summer!
Some of you participated in this study in 2014. We learned A LOT about how to measure pollination from that study, and have a publication in review of our findings. We will post this on our website as soon as it is accepted. We have used this year 1 data to GREATLY SIMPLIFY our program as well, so if you thought that Pollination Investigators was too time consuming, take a look at our revised protocol.
Information on the Pollination Investigators experiment and details on how to sign up can be found at: https://u.osu.edu/pollinationinvestigators/.
Toolkits will be distributed by mid-April, and we are looking for 200 participants from around the state, so feel free to forward this email to others who may be interested.