Natural Language Generation (NLG) is a technology that analyses data to generate text. In BeeWatch NLG is used to generate feedback to participants. Immediately on submission, submitters who offer an identification of the bumblebee species receive feedback that contextualises the record with respect to historical data held by BeeWatch and the NBN. BeeWatch will then verify the species and come back to the submitter by email. The email text is also composed by a computer, but edited by an expert where needed. When BeeWatch determines the bumblebee to be a different species than indicated by the submitter, differences in identification features between the two bumblebees are used as data that form the basis of a text. This text is subsequently organised, screened against linguistics and finally embedded in a wider feedback message which the expert uses as basis of the feedback emailed to the submitter. This allows our experts to concentrate on the identification and enables feedback that is much richer than otherwise would be the case due to time and resource constraints. We are continuing development of the NLG, and you can expect to see more contextualised feedback soon.

* There are 25 bumblebee species as the White-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lucorum s.l.) is a species complex which is thought to include three virtually indistinguishable species Bombus lucorum s.s., Bombus magnus and Bombus cryptarum. Additionally, the Short-haired bumblebee (Bombus subterraneus), has recently been re-introduced to the UK.

Crowd sourcing is the practice of obtaining information from a large group of people, often on-line. We are developing this practice for small groups of people with an interest in bumblebees, which one could call Group sourcing. BeeWatch needs such an approach because more and more people are submitting photos and we want to scale this up even further to obtain as much information as possible on the geographic spread of these important pollinators. Rather than having a few experts attempting to identify thousands of photos, we ask other people to suggest identifications. For many bumblebee species this leads to clear �majority votes� in which case there is little use for an expert. In other cases, opinions are divided and an expert will conduct the identification.