DoPI: The Database of Pollinator Interactions.

Area of Science:

• Ecology
• Conservation Biology
• Biodiversity Informatics

Background:

• Pollinating insects are crucial for ecosystems and agriculture.
• Existing plant-pollinator interaction data are fragmented across various sources.
• A unified, accessible database is needed to synthesize this information.

Purpose of the Study:

• To create the world's first online, open-access, searchable database of pollinator-plant interactions.
• To consolidate data from scientific literature and unpublished sources into a common format.
• To facilitate research on pollination dynamics and inform conservation strategies.

Main Methods:

• Conducted a systematic review of scientific literature.
• Solicited unpublished datasets from researchers and organizations.
• Collated interaction records, including metadata like date, location, and habitat, for British plant and insect flower-visitor species.

Main Results:

• Established the Database of Pollinator Interactions (DoPI), containing 101,539 records as of December 2021.
• Detailed over 320,000 interactions involving 1888 pollinator species and 1241 plant species.
• The database encompasses over 17,000 unique pairwise species interactions.

Conclusions:

• DoPI provides a valuable resource for addressing fundamental ecological and applied conservation questions regarding pollination.
• The database serves diverse stakeholders including researchers, conservationists, and policymakers.
• DoPI is a dynamic, open-access platform encouraging future data contributions and collaborative research.