We discussed the paper outlining a broad mission and strategic priorities for iBOL Europe, and we are also keen to receive feedback from the community in the upcoming months!
Rutger Vos (Naturalis), who talked about the results of a recent collaboration between Naturalis and Microsoft to scale up the classification of eDNA sequences with AI.
Lastly, Victor Deklerck introduced us to World Forest ID, a project aiming to verify the harvest location of timber and other forest risk commodities using chemical signatures, geospatial modelling and genomic data.

Our Community Meetings are open to all iBOL Europe members. You can join our community here – that’s also free!

Graphic by Suzanne Bateson, CC BY-SA.

At this slightly shorter edition of our meeting, we got an introduction to BGE+, the prosecution of the BGE project, which started in May, by Dimitris Koureas (Naturalis Biodiversity Centre), BGE + Project Director.
We were also  joined by Magda Bou Dagher Kharrat (European Forest Institute), who presented MEDFORGEN – the Mediterranean Forest Genetic Resources Network.

Our Community Meetings are free for all iBOL Europe members to join. You can join our community here – that’s also free!

Photo by FantoKasia on Flickr. CC-BY 4.0.

We started the meeting with Christian de Guttry, Robert Waterhouse (Swiss Bioinformatics Institute), and Nick Juty (University of Manchester), who walked us through BioDiv-FC, a project addressing the lack of biodiversity-specific requirements in many FAIR assessment tools. You can find their presentation here.

Then, Andriy Novikov (State Museum of Natural History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) and Oleksander Zinenko (Karazin Kharkiv National University) discussed the project “High-mountain grasslands transformation in the Ukrainian Carpathians” and its use of DNA barcoding. Andriy’s presentation is available here; Oleksander’s here.

The last presentation was by Kristy Deiner (SimplexDNA/SciArt), about SciArt. SciArt is an initiative exploring the interface between science and art, involving eDNA activities and citizen scientists, among many others.

Our Community Meetings are free for all iBOL Europe members to join. You can join our community here – that’s also free!

Photo by Arno Smit on Unsplash

For a start, we received some updates from the Working Group leads.

Then, Pablo Orozco (Leibniz-Institut DSMZ) walked us through the newly entered-into-force Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Agreement (BBNJ). While the BBNJ Treaty covers a wide range of issues, Pablo focused his presentation on Marine Genetic Resources (MGRs).

Then, Samuel Vanden Abele (Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences) presented Bop.Co, a species identification unit jointly run by the Institute of Natural Sciences and the Africa Museum. Bop.Co specialises in the identification of policy-relevant organisms and their derived products, using DNA analysis tools and expert taxonomic knowledge – a great example of DNA barcoding applications.

The last presentation was about the BGE paper “Empowering national capacity for DNA-based approach to species identification and biodiversity monitoring” by authors Elizavet Kaitetzidou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and Michał Grabowski (University of Łódź). The paper is available here.

The Community Meetings are free to join for all iBOL Europe members. You can join our community here – that’s also free!

Niels Raes (Naturalis Biodiversity Centre) and Urmas Kõljalg (University of Tartu) presented Biodiversity Meets Data (BMD), an EU-funded project aiming to create a centralised Single Access Point (SAP) for natural resources managers and policymakers to support biodiversity conservation across Europe. The slide deck is available here.

Then, Eli Chadwick (University of Cambridge) introduced the RO-CRATE profile being developed within the BGE project. RO-Crate is a mechanism for packaging research outputs with structured metadata, providing machine-readability and reproducibility FAIRly. The slides are available here.

• The Working Group on Training launched a survey to identify its main priority.
  Anyone can fill it in by 7 December, even if you’re not a WG member – it takes about 3 minutes, and it will benefit the WG greatly!
• The Working Group on Reference Library has a new co-chair to work with Georgi Bonchev: Michał Grabowski. The group presented their key objectives, which are indicated in Georgi’s slides.

The Community Meetings are free to join for all iBOL Europe members. You can join our community here – that’s also free!

Carolina Corrales (LIB) presented the recently published paper “The Role of Community Science in DNA-Based Biodiversity Monitoring“, including the differentiation between Contributory and Collaborative Citizen Science and related examples, the benefits and challenges related to citizen science engagement and how to overcome them. Carolina’s presentation is available here.

Then, Emre Keskin (University of Ankara) presented the COST Action proposal under development to further develop the DNA barcoding community in Europe. 

Lastly, we received updates from the Working Groups, presented by their respective co-chairs. All of them have progressed in structuring their work plans.

We’ll meet again on 24 November.

The Community Meetings are free to join for all iBOL Europe members. You can join our community here – that’s also free.

Ben Price (NHMUK) and Stephan Kuehbandner (SNSB) presented the reference library curation tool developed within the BGE project, which is available for download here (for Linux and Mac, see this GitHub repository). Both Ben and Stephan would be very happy to receive feedback on the tool, so if you have any, please let them know!
Ben’s slides are here; Stephan’s are here.

Then, Onno Calf (Naturalis Biodiversity Center) presented the Dutch Target List, developed by the ARISE project. There are quite a number of gaps yet to be filled in the database, so if you can contribute to filling those gaps, please reach out to the ARISE team. Onno’s presentation is available here.

Lastly, we received updates from the Working Groups, presented by their respective co-chairs. All of them have progressed in structuring their work plans. Here are the links to the presentations from the Data Standards, Reference Libraries and Training Groups.

We’ll meet again on 29 September.

The Community Meetings are free to join for all iBOL Europe members. You can join our community here – that’s also free.

Rutger Vos (Naturalis Biodiversity Center, NL) presented the iBOL Europe Gap List: a comprehensive analysis of existing gaps in the barcode databases. Together with the species names and their taxonomic classification, we show to what extent they are represented in the BOLD database.
The list is a major achievement we reached within the BGE project. You can access the list here; and learn a bit more about it here.

Florian Leese (University of Duisburg-Essen, DE), introduced us to ESEO – the European Society for Environmental DNA & Omics initiative aiming to create a society for regular European meetings and collaborative efforts in the field of eDNA and environmental Omics.

We also kicked off three Working Groups.

• Stefaniya Kamenova and Spiros Papakostas introduced their ideas and ambitions for the Working Group on Training that they lead.
• Laura Najera Cortazar and Rutger Vos presented their plan for a Working Group on Data Standards.
• Georgi Bonchev shared a proposal for the Working Group on Reference Libraries.

So much for this Community Meeting, we’ll meet again on 28 July 2025, at 15:30-17:00 CEST.

The Community Meetings are free to join for all iBOL Europe members. You can join our community here – that’s also free.

Photo by Birger Strahl on Unsplash

This time, the meeting was chaired by Michał Grabowski (University of Łódź). Kasia Fantoni (Naturalis Biodiversity Center, NL) shared updates about iBOL Europe’s Working Groups and the next steps to set them up.
Rutger Vos (Naturalis Biodiversity Center, NL) presented the main features of BOLD v5, the latest version of the Barcode of Life Data Systems, that was launched in Autumn 2024. You can have a look at Rutger’s presentation here.
Maria J. Santos (University of Zurich, CH) and Meredith Christine Schuman (University of Zurich, CH) introduced us to OBSGESSION, the EU-funded project addressing the challenges of biodiversity decline by integrating methods and technologies to assess and predict biodiversity change and its drivers. Maria’s presentation is available here.
Rodolphe Rougerie (French National Museum of Natural History, FR) told us about the launch of FrBOL, the French iBOL National Node, from its beginning to its official launch in November 2024. Rodolphe’s presentation is available here.

The meeting kicked off with Alexandros Triantafyllidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), who shared the experience of setting up an iBOL national node as GrBOL was launched in October.

Tomasz Mamos (University of Łódź, Poland) discussed the barcoding of Dark Taxa and reported on the experience with the DNA barcode Reference Library for the Lowland Grabia River in Poland.

Mads Kristian Reinholdt Jensen (UiT – the Arctic University of Norway, Norway) shared the ambitious vision for global eDNA-based monitoring in a changing world.

The session concluded with David Castle (University of Victoria, Canada), who shared insights from the outcomes of COP16, especially focusing on the CBD Decision on DSI CBD/COP/16/2.

The next Community Meeting will take place on 27 January 2025. Looking forward to meeting you there!

All iBOL Europe members can join the Community Meetings for free. You can become a member here – that’s also free!