Strengthening taxonomic approaches for biodiversity

Expected Outcome:

In supporting the implementation of the European Green Deal, the EU biodiversity strategy for 2030 and the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework, successful proposals will contribute to the impact of this Destination on improved knowledge, innovations, methods, pathways and tools to protect healthy ecosystems and to restore degraded ones ensuring the provision of ecosystem services, including for adaptation and/or mitigation to climate change, thus contributing to the objectives of the European Climate Law on nature-based solutions and ecosystem-based adaptation.

Project results are expected to contribute to all the following expected outcomes:

• the taxonomic community (experts who identify, name, describe, and classify biodiversity working from the level of molecules, including eDNA and eRNA, genomes and metagenomes, species and populations, to habitats and ecosystems) and its capacity to engage with and support policy and other decision-making on biodiversity, climate change and other environmental issues are strengthened;
• strategic approaches for a systematic reinforcement of expertise and training of the taxonomic community in Europe, including genomics for biodiversity identification and monitoring are developed.

Scope:

R&I activities should:

• fill gaps in taxonomic expertise, including in the context of intra-species biodiversity (genetic diversity within and between populations) and habitats/ecosystems;
• establish, pilot and test novel taxonomic approaches on observing and quantifying biodiversity at all levels;
• develop strategies and roadmaps for systematic capacity building and transfer of taxonomic knowledge;
• compile a comprehensive open online catalogue of taxonomic and nomenclatural databases, and encourage the existing databases to align with common standards and FAIR principles, to merge where possible, and to link with or mirror each other. This catalogue should be designed to support the process of taxonomic identification, covering a wide range of databases from genetic information to species classification^[1], and support a common European Taxonomy Initiative contributing to the Global Taxonomy Initiative;
• support development of tools to facilitate taxonomic training, such as reference collections, guidelines, standards and schemes for academic certification (e.g. within the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System ECTS);
• establish an EU network of taxonomy and genomics experts, from taxonomic facilities to universities, including an interconnected network of biodiversity genomics facilities^[2];
• ensure representative coverage of biodiversity across terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems, including lesser-known taxa and ecosystems and with regard to such taxa and ecosystems that act as climate change indicators, recognising the critical role that biodiversity and ecosystem services play in climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Proposals should address either Area A or Area B as follows:

Area A:

• integrate and maximise the impact of taxonomic work across the different stages of biodiversity identification, description, curation, publication, digitalization and management, to the scale needed at national and European level;
• consolidate and underline the taxonomic ground for long-term monitoring efforts based on expert knowledge and activity, and the use of advanced and validated tools.

Proposals may provide financial support to third parties, to cover specific needs/taxa/ecosystems and/or issues. These third party grants should focus on the most pressing and identified knowledge gaps, by reinforcing taxonomy notably in expertise and data lacking areas such as in Central and East European, Mediterranean and outermost regions. Maximum 30% of the requested EU contribution should be allocated to this purpose.

Area B:

• widen participation and accessibility of genomic data, increase geographical coverage and scale of participation, whilst engaging in training and knowledge transfer, including links with non-genomic data (“from molecules to ecosystems approach”);
• consolidate and enhance the uptake / use / impact of genomic data as more and better-quality data become available to support environmental management, environmental risk assessment and sustainable use of natural resources;
• establish a comprehensive biodiversity genomics system in Europe, based on latest progresses, particularly in DNA barcoding and whole-genome sequencing through participation in the International Barcode of Life (iBOL) and the Earth BioGenome Project.

Proposals may provide, when relevant, financial support to third parties to cover specific needs/taxa/ecosystems and/or issues related to the use of genomic data. These third party grants should focus on the most pressing and identified knowledge gaps, by reinforcing genomic taxonomy notably in expertise and data lacking areas such as in Central and East European, Mediterranean and outermost regions. Maximum 30% of the requested EU contribution should be allocated to this purpose.

Proposals should foresee cooperation with the EC Knowledge Centre for Biodiversity and the Science Service project BioAgora.

Proposals should use existing platforms and information sharing mechanisms relevant to the topic and build on results from relevant projects including TETTRIs, BGE and EuropaBON^[3]. The proposals should foresee close collaboration with the other project selected under this topic and collaboration with the projects selected for topics HORIZON-CL6-2025-01-BIODIV-02: Strengthening the capacity of citizen science in biodiversity observation and HORIZON-CL6-2025-01-BIODIV-04 on large-scale biodiversity observations.

Proposals should coordinate and collaborate with relevant organisations such as the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and with the European Alien Species Information Network (EASIN) and the upcoming pilot on the EU Biodiversity Observation Coordination Centre (EBOCC). The proposals should also connect to existing global and European biodiversity data infrastructures including the Catalogue of Life (COL), DiSSCo, LifeWatch ERIC, EMBRC, eLTER and MIRRI-ERIC^[4], where relevant. The activities should cover also alien species, thereby contributing to the implementation of the Invasive Alien Species Regulation.

Concrete efforts should be made to ensure that the data produced in the context of the funded projects is FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable), particularly in the context of real-time data feeds, exploring workflows that can provide “FAIR-by-design” data, i.e., data that is FAIR from its generation. Possibilities offered by the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) to store and give access to research data should be considered.

Citizen science approach is encouraged as research methodology at all stages of the research activities in addressing both Area A and Area B. Citizen science activities should follow a R&I approach in line with disciplinary/sectoral standards, including for the data and knowledge generation.

International cooperation is encouraged, in particular with countries and partners that support global efforts such as the Global Taxonomy Initiative, iBOL, GBIF and COL.

The use of AI could be considered for the analyses needed under this topic.

[1] Including nomenclatural databases such as the International Plant Names Index (IPNI), Zoobank, Algaebase and Mycobank.

[2] Associated Countries can participate in the network.

[3] Other relevant projects are BIOCEAN5D, MARBEFES, OBAMA-NEXT, MARCO-BOLO and DiverSea and the project funded under Area A of HORIZON-CL6-2024-BIODIV-01: Digital for Nature.

[4] And any other relevant research infrastructure prioritised by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). The catalogue of European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) research infrastructures portfolio can be browsed from ESFRI website https://ri-portfolio.esfri.eu/