>> As a child I always had that
excitement and passion for the
outdoors.
I did what a lot of kids do,
which is go out and just play
with insects.
All you have to do is look at
an insect up close.
They're just fascinating
to look at.
But it wasn't until later that
I really got excited about
insects as something to study
that you could actually get paid
to do.
>> Claudio Gratton's boyhood
insect interest stayed with him.
And when he grew up, he found a
way to satisfy his curiosity,
and his particular penchant for
pollinators, when he achieved a
position as Professor of
Entomology at UW-Madison.
>> My research has to do with
what we call beneficial insects,
insects that do things that we
like, like pollinating crops.
The ones most familiar to us are
honey bees.
We've become very reliant on
them.
Honey bees lately have been
stressed, so their populations
are in decline.
Native bees, on the other hand,
are much more diverse.
There's over 500 species just in
Wisconsin of native bees.
So using native pollinators as a
substitute for honey bees is
something we're looking at.
>> Claudio's team is also
looking at an innovative way to
identify those many native
pollinators.
>> One of the biggest challenges
we have actually is figuring out
who is there, what species are
there.
Usually this works by pinning
them all up very neatly and then
sending them to the one or two
specialists that know how to
actually work with them and
identify them.
Very challenging to do.
So one of the things we've been
working on is to see if we can
automate this process.
Basically doing the same thing
the FBI might do through facial
recognition, we do it through
bee wing identification.
You can take a picture with your
Smart phone of a bee, and very
quickly find out what it is,
rather than just say it's a bee.
There're a lot of different
kinds of bees.
>> Figuring out what those bees
need to succeed as plant
pollinators puts Claudio out in
the field.
>> These wild bees depend on
natural habitats in the
landscape.
Hedgerows, woodlots, grasslands
in particular, tend to be good
for these wild pollinators.
What I'd like to move towards is
maintaining areas like this in
our agricultural landscapes.
We often think of these areas as
wastelands, as unproductive
areas, when in fact they're very
productive.
By having these habitats in the
landscape we're generating
beneficial insects.
So coming to Wisconsin, I see
this diversity out there.
I see forests next to Ag fields.
I see pasture next to row crops.
>> And what we see is a
professor passionate about his
profession.
>> I usually go home and talk to
my kids, and I always ask them
after school, "What did you
learn new today?"
And it's really fun to be able
to offer the same thing.
Today I learned about, you know,
how bees dig underground.
Today, I learned about what a
pollen ball looks like.
I can learn something new every
day.