Monitor pollinators
UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme: FIT CountsProject Summary
The "FIT Count" (Flower-Insect Timed Count) asks you to count all the insects that visit a particular type of flower in a ten-minute period. The counts form part of the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme to help assess trends in the abundance of pollinating insects.
Need to know
- Start Date: 20/05/2019
- End Date: 30/09/2019
- County: National
- Organisation Name: UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme
- Project Category: Species surveys
Project Description
PoMS is the only scheme in the world generating systematic data on the abundance of bees, hoverflies and other flower-visiting insects at a national scale (currently across England, Wales and Scotland). Together with long-term occurrence records collated by the Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society and Hoverfly Recording Scheme, these data will form an invaluable resource from which to measure trends in pollinator populations and target our conservation efforts.
With reports of dramatic losses of insects occurring across the globe, and concern about what this means for wider biodiversity and ecosystem health, there has never been a more important time to document evidence of change in populations of pollinating insects.
Sign Up Information
Project Contact Email: poms@ceh.ac.uk
All the information you need for the FIT Count is available on our website, including instructions, recording forms and identification guides. FIT Counts can be done in warm, dry weather from April to September, at any location where there are suitable flowers. What better way to spend ten minutes than to sit in the sun and watch and count insects!
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