Pollinator-flower interactions in gardens during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown of 2020

During the main COVID-19 global pandemic lockdown period of 2020 animpromptu set of pollination ecologists came together via social media andpersonal contacts to carry out standardised surveys of the flower visits and plantsin gardens. The surveys involved 67 rural, suburban and urban gardens, of varioussizes, ranging from 61.18° North in Norway to 37.96° South in Australia, resulting ina data set of 25,174 rows, with each row being a unique interaction record for thatdate/site/plant species, and comprising almost 47,000 visits to flowers, as well asrecords of flowers that were not visited by pollinators, for over 1,000 species andvarieties belonging to more than 460 genera and 96 plant families. The more than650 species of flower visitors belong to 12 orders of invertebrates and four ofvertebrates. In this first publication from the project, we present a brief descriptionof the data and make it freely available for any researchers to use in the future, theonly restriction being that they cite this paper in the first instance. The datagenerated from these global surveys will provide scientific evidence to help usunderstand the role that private gardens (in urban, rural and suburban areas) canplay in conserving insect pollinators and identify management actions to enhancetheir potential.