Pollinator Week is Abuzz at Museum

From Plant Press, Vol. 17, No. 3, July 2014.

Gary Krupnick is the “Scientist is In” during Pollinator Week at the National Museum of Natural History, engaging the public with specimens from the U.S. National Herbarium. (photo by Hilary-Morgan Watt, Smithsonian Institution)

The week of June 16-22, 2014, was designated as Pollinator Week to mark a necessary step toward addressing the urgent issue of declining pollinator and plant populations. As a member of the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC), the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) had a series of events at the Smithsonian to mark Pollinator Week.

This year NAPPC teamed up with Smithsonian’s North American Orchid Conservation Center (NAOCC) to promote Pollinator Week with the production of NAPPC’s annual Pollinator Poster. The 2014 poster features illustrations of seven orchid-pollinator interactions. Several public programs at NMNH during the week focused on orchids and their pollinators.

Public programs included talks in the Q?rius Theater by Jonathan Mawdsley (Smithsonian Entomologist) speaking on beetle pollinators of South Africa's Kruger National Park, Tom Mirenda (Smithsonian Orchid Specialist) discussing the mysteries of orchid pollination, and Dennis Whigham (Smithsonian Ecologist) talking about conservation of native orchids. Gary Krupnick (Smithsonian Conservation Biologist) hosted a “Scientist is In” table in the Butterfly Pavilion, displaying a selection of plant specimens and talking about why endangered plants need their pollinators. A Pollination Party was held at NMNH’s Butterfly Habitat Garden where Smithsonian Gardens staff and students from the University of Maryland PollinaTerps had fun family-friendly activities staged throughout the garden.

NMNH raised awareness of pollination biology through social media and its use of images, blog posts, videos, live-tweeting presentations, and news stories. The most popular NMNH Facebook post during the week was a link to a Smithsonian Science story about nectar-feeding bats pollinating Agave, an essential ingredient of tequila.

NMNH reached out to other Smithsonian social media units and other museums to participate in Pollinator Week. Archives of American Art, Freer and Sackler, the Hirshhorn Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Phillips Collection joined in on the conversation with a unique take on pollinator content. For instance, the National Portrait Gallery tweeted a photograph of Walt Whitman holding a butterfly.

The NMNH #SIpollinator twitter chat, an online conversation about pollination biology and how pollinators affect our daily lives, resulted in 733 tweets. The chat was moderated by Krupnick, and featured a panel consisting of Laurie Adams (Executive Director of Pollinator Partnership), Sam Droege (USGS Native Bee Inventory and Monitoring Program), and Floyd Shockley (Assistant Collections Manager, NMNH Department of Entomology). Droege’s image of Osmia atriventris, a pollinator of blueberry, was the most retweeted image during the chat.

Osmia atriventris, a megachilid bee widespread in Eastern North America and an effective pollinator of blueberry. Image from USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab’s flickr photostream.

The NMNH twitter chat premiered just after the White House issued President Obama’s memorandum on pollinator protection. The President’s memorandum directs federal agencies to focus efforts on research, prevention, and recovery from pollinator losses, including efforts on public education. The Smithsonian Institution will use this opportunity to partner with a number of agencies on pollination research and education.