Lincoln Best is the Lead Taxonomist for the Oregon Bee Project/Atlas. He is obsessed with natural history, the little things, and designing plant communities to support biodiversity. He has studied the biodiversity of native bees from Haida Gwaii to Tasmania, and from Baja California to Taiwan. Few things excite him more than observing 4mm native bees on their floral hosts in arid habitats.

Listen in to learn about Lincoln Best’s manifesto for native bees and plant communities, and his best practices for volunteers in the Oregon Bee Atlas.

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“A lot of our environmental issues are landscape issues. So in order to have a healthy landscape, we need to know how to manage places and also restore them.” – Lincoln Best

Show Notes:

• What Lincoln believes to be the key to solving our environmental issues
• How to maximize environmental benefit from the biodiversity of plants
• What Lincoln has been doing with the Oregon Bee Atlas
• The process of organizing and cataloguing thousands of bee specimens
• What makes Southern Calgary ideal for studying the effects of biodiversity on pollinator habitats
• The importance of proper labeling
• Lincoln’s best practices for data and specimen collection
• How species abundance plays into specimen collection

“It’s really interesting for someone like me that loves to hunt for flower populations and look for these strange bees to be able to get that data right out of the collection.” – Lincoln Best

Links Mentioned:

• Lincoln’s favorite book: “Bees of the World” by Charles Michener
• Lincoln’s favorite tools: a fishing rod, and a can of ethanol
• Lincoln’s favorite bee: Eucera Longhorn Bees
• Connect with Lincoln Best on Twitter