FARMINGTON — Western Maine Audubon will present Of Bumble Bees and Citizen Science at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 12, in Room 101 of the Roberts Learning Center at the University of Maine at Farmington.

About 1,500 agricultural crops depend on insect pollination worldwide, but a number of these same insect pollinators are in global decline. Bees and other pollinators are still at the very heart of much of our food chain so understanding their decline is of deep economic as well as ecological importance.

In Maine, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, in partnership with the Universities of Maine at Farmington and Orono, is sponsoring a five-year citizen science initiative to gather baseline data on bumble bee populations in the state.

University of Maine professor of ecology Ron Butler will discuss his involvement in the project and the biology and challenges faced by bumble bees.