Collections

The Special issue “Antarctic and Southern Ocean biodiversity” aims to celebrate the wide biodiversity of the Antarctic and Sub Antarctic region in the terrestrial and marine realms.

The (sub)Antarctic and Southern Ocean are host to a unique biodiversity. Due to the remoteness and harsh environment this biodiversity often remains poorly described despite similar treats as the rest of the globe.

The SCAR Antarctic Biodiversity Portal is a community effort that supports the publication of Biodiversity data in accordance with the FAIR Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and the provisions of the Antarctic treaty System (scientific observations and results from Antarctica shall be exchanged and made freely available).

The German Barcode of Life initiative (GBOL) aims at creating a DNA barcode library of German organisms. The third phase, "GBOL III: Dark Taxa", focuses on little known or unknown groups of insects in Germany, in particular Diptera and parasitoid Hymenoptera. GBOL III: Dark Taxa is a joint project with partners from three major German natural history institutions in Bonn (Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig), Munich (SNSB–Zoologische Staatssammlung München) and Stuttgart (Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Stuttgart). Further partners are the University of Würzburg and the Entomological Society Krefeld. Starting from July 2020, 12 PhD students are tackling the taxonomy of selected groups of poorly known Diptera and parasitoid Hymenoptera using an integrative taxonomic approach that that builds on DNA barcoding and morphology but employs also other methods. Further work packages include employing HTS techniques to estimate the role of cryptic parasitoids during outbreaks of pest species, establishing a platform for using OTU based data and developing pipelines for poor-quality samples and taxonomics approaches. The project is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, grant ID: 01LI1901). For additional information see https://bolgermany.de/home/gbol3/.

This Collection of the BDJ will report original results from recent biodiversity recording and survey work undertaken in Cuc Phuong National Park, northern Vietnam, under the framework of the VIETBIO project. The issue will consists of a “main” cover paper characterizing the study area and general project approach and activities, followed by individual papers for separate higher taxa as studied during the project, and some concluding summary and outlook. The main purpose is to make primary biodiversity records openly available including several new and interesting findings for this biodiversity-rich conservation area. All individual (taxonomic) contributions with their respective primary records are expected to provide useful baselines for further taxonomic, phylogenetic, ecological, and conservation-related studies on the respective taxa, and thus will be maintained as separate datasets including separate GUIDs also for further updating. 

VIETBIO ["Innovative approaches to biodiversity discovery and characterization in Vietnam"] is a bilateral German-Vietnamese research and capacity building project focused on the development and transfer of new methods and technology towards an integrated biodiversity discovery and monitoring system for Vietnam. Dedicated field training and testing of innovative methodologies was undertaken in Cuc Phuong National Park as part of and with support from the project, which led to the new biodiversity data and records to be made available in this issue.

VIETBIO is a collaboration between the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science (MfN), the Botanical Garden and Botanical Museum, Free University of Berlin (BGBM), and the Vietnam National Museum of Nature (VNMN), the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources (IEBR), the Southern Institute of Ecology (SIE), as well as the Institute of Tropical Biology (ITB), which all institutions under the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology (VAST).

The project is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since 2017 (grant ID: 01 DP17052).

More information you can find on our website: https://bioseasia.org/vietbio.

Omics experiments are generating large quantities of data at an ever-increasing rate due to the constantly evolving technologies in the field of biology and environmental sciences. Commonly, omics datasets are deposited into public thematic repositories, such as the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) databases  European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), GenBank and the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ), from where they are openly accessible. Datasets can also be described and published as data papers to receive additional visibility and citation credit as any other journal article. 

To facilitate and incentivise extended high quality metadata descriptions and scholarly publication of omics data, Pensoft has launched a new type of publication - OMICS Data Paper - in the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ). Authors are invited to describe their omic datasets by using the novel streamlined workflow for creating a manuscript at a click of a button from metadata deposited in ENA. Imported metadata will be automatically converted into a manuscript draft in the Arpha Writing Tool (AWT), where authors can edit and amend it with additional information and submit it for peer review and publication in BDJ. 

Alternatively, an omics data paper manuscript can be created directly in the AWT from where the data paper can be linked to any omics dataset, deposited in repositories other than ENA. 

Publication of the first 10 submitted manuscripts will be free of charge!

Editors of the 2021 submissions: Dmitry Schigel, Ivan Chadin, Alexey Seregin, Nina Filippova, Pedro Cardoso, Vladimir Blagoderov, Alexander Sennikov.

A special collection of data papers on Russia in the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) by GBIF - the Global Biodiversity Information Facility - in collaboration with the Finnish Biodiversity Information Facility (FinBIF) and Pensoft Publishers.

In correspondence with the funding priorities of this programme, at least 80% of the records in a dataset should have coordinates that fall within Russia. However, authors of the paper may be affiliated with institutions anywhere in the world. Each of the data papers is a descriptor of more than 5,000 occurrence records from the target region that are new to GBIF.org. Datasets may contain additional records from other regions, and can be published as occurrence or sampling-event datasets, as well as checklists.

The APC waiver quota for the "Biota of Russia" collection has expired, but the collection remains open. The authors can continue submission of data papers to this collection, however they should take care to cover Article Processing Charges, if their manuscripts are accepted for publication.

See full description of the 2021 call and additional resources.

Editors of the West of Urals 2020 call: Vince Smith, Dmitry Schigel, Ivan Chadin, Alexey Seregin
West of Urals 2020 call (archived): www.gbif.org/news/1VHfuSBGwSzDBxqRHucAHY

Azores is an isolate volcanic archipelago located in the Atlantic which belongs to the Macaronesia biogeographical region and is among the richest regions concerning fungi, plant and animal diversity in Europe. Currently the total number of terrestrial taxa (species and subspecies) in the Azores is estimated of about 6,164. The total number of terrestrial endemic species and/or subspecies from the Azores is about 452 (411 species). Concerning the marine organisms, the listed the most updated list from 2010a, listed bout 1,883 taxa belonging to 16 Phyla.

The aim of this thematic collection is to collate all the publications dealing with the taxonomic diversity of Azorean terrestrial and marine biota including mostly the categories “Research Article”, “Taxonomic Paper” and “Data Paper”, but also “Alien Species Profiles” and “Species Conservation Profiles”

The Philippine Biodiversity Symposium is an annual gathering of researchers and practitioners working in the fields of wildlife studies and biodiversity conservation in the Philippines.
The 26th Annual Philippine Biodiversity Symposium was held on July 18-22, 2017 at the Ateneo de Manila University. Under the topic “New and Emerging Trends in Biodiversity Research and Conservation”, 16 plenary and 46 session presentations along with numerous posters from more than 300 participants focused on current research results and conservation efforts on Philippine biodiversity.

The symposium was co-organized by the Biodiversity Conservation Society of the Philippines (BCSP) and the Ateneo de Manila University Department of Biology, and presented in cooperation with Biodiversity Management Bureau of DENR, Foundation for the Philippine Environment, GIZ, Team Energy Foundation and Pensoft Publishers. The event was sponsored by Pensoft, the Center for Conservation Innovation, Crocodylus porosus Philippines Inc., Energy Development Cooperation, roots.asia, Center for Outdoor Recreation and Expedition, Quezon City Government and Ateneo de Manila University Press, among others.

The event draws over 250 participants from the academic and research institutions, government agencies, non-government organizations, independent researchers, and high school, undergraduate and graduate students.

Selected studies that have been presented during the symposium are published in here.

This TDWG Special Collection in the Biodiversity Data Journal highlights major milestones and issues related to biodiversity informatics and the history of the Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) as an organization.

The article collection “Biota of Canada” aims to disseminate new and existing information about the species diversity of Canada through publications of species checklists and reports of new species records. These will ultimately be used to populate an online Biota of Canada checklist.