Pollinators play a vital role in most terrestrial ecosystems, supporting wild plant communities and enhancing agricultural yields. However, despite their ecological and economic importance, they have been experiencing an alarming decline over the past decades. The Mediterranean region, known for harboring highly diverse communities of plants and pollinators, is particularly vulnerable due to intense anthropogenic pressures. Furthermore, the ecological roles of many floral visitors remain poorly understood, hindering conservation efforts. In response, in recent years, growing attention has been directed toward the contribution that citizens can give in support of pollinator research. An increasing number of projects have adopted a Citizen Science approach to enable large-scale data collection. The LIFE 4 Pollinators project (LIFE18/GIE/IT/000755) “Involving people to protect wild bees and other pollinators in the Mediterranean” aims to promote the conservation of pollinating insects and entomophilous plants across the Mediterranean region by fostering progressive changes in human practices that threaten wild pollinators. In addition to the implementation of several actions to raise awareness, the project launched a web platform to collect photographic records of insect-flower interaction from the public. The platform is expected to remain active for at least ten years, during which time we encourage continuing record submissions by interested bodies. We commit to periodic online updates of the current dataset, which we make freely available to anyone.

Pollinators play a vital role in most terrestrial ecosystems, supporting wild plant communities and enhancing agricultural yields. However, despite their ecological and economic importance, they have been experiencing an alarming decline over the past decades. The Mediterranean region, known for harboring highly diverse communities of plants and pollinators, is particularly vulnerable due to intense anthropogenic pressures. Furthermore, the ecological roles of many floral visitors remain poorly understood, hindering conservation efforts. In response, in recent years, growing attention has been directed toward the contribution that citizens can give in support of pollinator research. An increasing number of projects have adopted a Citizen Science approach to enable large-scale data collection. The LIFE 4 Pollinators project (LIFE18/GIE/IT/000755) “Involving people to protect wild bees and other pollinators in the Mediterranean” aims to promote the conservation of pollinating insects and entomophilous plants across the Mediterranean region by fostering progressive changes in human practices that threaten wild pollinators. In addition to the implementation of several actions to raise awareness, the project launched a web platform to collect photographic records of insect-flower interaction from the public. The platform is expected to remain active for at least ten years, during which time we encourage continuing record submissions by interested bodies. We commit to periodic online updates of the current dataset, which we make freely available to anyone.

Pollinators play a vital role in most terrestrial ecosystems, supporting wild plant communities and enhancing agricultural yields. However, despite their ecological and economic importance, they have been experiencing an alarming decline over the past decades. The Mediterranean region, known for harboring highly diverse communities of plants and pollinators, is particularly vulnerable due to intense anthropogenic pressures. Furthermore, the ecological roles of many floral visitors remain poorly understood, hindering conservation efforts. In response, in recent years, growing attention has been directed toward the contribution that citizens can give in support of pollinator research. An increasing number of projects have adopted a Citizen Science approach to enable large-scale data collection. The LIFE 4 Pollinators project (LIFE18/GIE/IT/000755) “Involving people to protect wild bees and other pollinators in the Mediterranean” aims to promote the conservation of pollinating insects and entomophilous plants across the Mediterranean region by fostering progressive changes in human practices that threaten wild pollinators. In addition to the implementation of several actions to raise awareness, the project launched a web platform to collect photographic records of insect-flower interaction from the public. The platform is expected to remain active for at least ten years, during which time we encourage continuing record submissions by interested bodies. We commit to periodic online updates of the current dataset, which we make freely available to anyone.

The "Bees of Portugal Collection, Science Museum of the University of Coimbra" dataset includes all the records of the specimens of Portuguese bees (Anthophila: Hymenoptera) on the zoological collection of the Science Museum of the University of Coimbra. It includes 13,374 specimens that were identified to species level between October 2023 and May 2024 (except 61 specimens, to genus level). This work was performed inside one of the PhD tasks of Hugo Gaspar (funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology – FCT - 2023.01736.BD) and for the improvement of reference collections for the project ARCADE (funded by the European Union through the project TETTRIs ARCADE 2/T1 - GA_101081903).The publication of this dataset is associated with the publication of the following paper: TO COMPLETE