Category: Biodiversity Data Journal

Pensoft at the European Small Mammal Conservation Conference 2026

The inaugural conference took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, bringing together researchers, conservationists and practitioners to address gaps in small mammal research and monitoring. 

The inaugural European Small Mammal Conservation Conference (SMCC 2026) took place in Sofia, Bulgaria, from 21 to 25 September 2026, bringing together researchers, conservationists and practitioners from across Europe and beyond to address gaps in small mammal research and monitoring. 

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Organised jointly by the Habitat Foundation, the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Dutch Mammal Society and Mammal Conservation Europe, with support from the Faculty of Biology at Sofia University, the conference formed part of the Life for Falcons project, funded by the EU LIFE Programme.

This year’s conference was held jointly with the 33rd Hamster Working Group and the VIII European Ground Squirrel Meeting, making hamsters and sousliks the primary focus, alongside broader topics including renewable energy development, agricultural impacts, reintroductions, predator–prey interactions and innovative methodologies in small mammal research.

Pensoft’s Participation

We were delighted to participate in SMCC 2026 with an exhibition booth, showcasing the breadth of publishing services we offer to the biodiversity and conservation community. It was a pleasure to present our portfolio of journals dedicated to advancing research across ecology, biodiversity and conservation.

  • Pensoft’s booth at SMCC 2026.

We were particularly proud to present the following journals:

  • Pensoft’s journal portfolio exhibited at SMCC 2026.

Meeting delegates from across the small mammal research community was tremendously rewarding, and we thoroughly enjoyed discussing how our journals can support and amplify their work.

Beyond our academic offerings, we were particularly excited to showcase beautiful art prints illustrated by our in-house scientific illustrator, Denitsa Peneva. The collection featured stunning depictions of otters, olinguitos and hamsters.

Pensoft’s art prints at SMCC 2026.

Conference Highlights

The scientific programme was exceptional, and we were privileged to attend many outstanding presentations that demonstrated the importance of innovative monitoring approaches and conservation action.

Lessons from Citizen Science for Small Mammal Conservation Monitoring in Great Britain

We were delighted to attend a talk by Matt Larsen-Daw, Chief Executive of the Mammal Society (UK), which presented a portfolio of citizen science programmes designed to address distribution knowledge and population monitoring across Great Britain. The programmes, united by the Mammal Mapper smartphone app, included the National Harvest Mouse Survey, the Searching for Shrews initiative, and the University Mammal Challenge. 

The presentation highlighted the value of standardised effort data, the differing trade-offs between structured and opportunistic recording, and the potential for these approaches to be applied across European contexts.

Matt Larsen-Daw presenting “Lessons from citizen science for small mammal conservation monitoring in Great Britain” at SMCC 2026.

Strong Decline of Hamster Populations in Bulgaria

We were equally impressed by Nedko Nedyalkov’s presentation documenting the significant decline in distribution and abundance of both the common hamster (Cricetus cricetus) and the Romanian hamster (Mesocricetus newtoni) across Bulgaria. The research revealed that population reductions, detected through owl pellet analysis and trapping methods, likely began in the 1950s with agricultural intensification and continue today. 

Given that both species are strictly protected under the EU Habitats Directive yet lack active conservation projects, the presentation substantiated the urgent need for targeted conservation measures. We are also pleased to note that Nedko serves as a subject editor for two of our open-access journals, ZooKeys and the Biodiversity Data Journal.

Nedko Nedyalkov presenting “Strong decline of the distribution and abundance of Cricetus cricetus and Mesocricetus newtoni (Mammalia: Cricetinae) in Bulgaria” at SMCC 2026.

Reintroduced Saker Falcons and Their Dependence on European Ground Squirrels

Yana Andonova’s presentation on the diet of Bulgaria’s reintroduced saker falcon population provided compelling evidence of the breeding birds’ overwhelming dependence on the European ground squirrel (Spermophilus citellus) as a primary food source.

Through food-remain analysis, visual observations and camera-trap monitoring, the research documented that ground squirrels comprised over 80 per cent of identified prey items, with small rodents accounting for 89 per cent overall! It is also worth mentioning that Andonova is an author in our open-access Biodiversity Data Journal.

Yana Andonova presenting “Reintroduced Saker Falcons (Falco cherrug Gray, 1834) are dependent on European ground squirrels during the breeding period in Bulgaria” at SMCC 2026.

Looking Forward

Attending SMCC 2026 was a genuine pleasure and particularly meaningful given that the conference took place in Sofia, the city in which our company is based. Connecting with researchers and conservationists working at the forefront of small mammal conservation, and sharing our commitment to advancing biodiversity research through open-access publishing, reinforced our dedication to supporting this important field. 

We look very much forward to engaging with this community again at future events!

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GBIF Marks 25 Years of FAIR Biodiversity Data, Now Spanning 70 Countries and 3.8 Billion Records

As GBIF marks 25 years and 3.8 billion records across 70 countries, a new overview looks ahead – tackling data gaps to shape the next quarter-century.

Digital biodiversity data has come a long way. Twenty-five years ago, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) launched with 21 founding countries and a simple but ambitious goal: make the world’s biodiversity data freely and openly available to anyone, anywhere.

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Today, GBIF’s network includes 70 participating countries, along with data providers across more than 120 countries, offering open access to over 3.8 billion biodiversity data records. This milestone is explored in a new overview article published in the Biodiversity Data Journal, which traces GBIF’s trajectory over the past quarter-century and the challenges that remain as it looks ahead.

GBIF Executive Secretary Dr. Joe Miller remarked:

As GBIF celebrates its 25th anniversary, I’m very proud to serve as Executive Secretary of the organisation and to have contributed to this milestone publication. Detailing the history of GBIF both as an infrastructure and a global network, the article pays tribute to all the people involved in the network throughout a quarter century—be they staff, participants, nodes, volunteers, data publishers or data users. It represents the past, present and future of GBIF. I believe the paper will help strengthen our network and its capacity to respond to biodiversity data needs both now and in the future.

GBIF was established in 2001, following a proposal from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Megascience Forum which concluded that “an international mechanism is needed to make biodiversity data and information accessible worldwide”.

The call came in response to a problem facing the international community after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit: the world’s biodiversity knowledge was scattered across a small number of institutions, concentrated in wealthy countries, with no shared way to bring it together in support of the newly signed Convention on Biological Diversity.

Now, a quarter-century later, GBIF has become the foundational infrastructure for biodiversity science and policy worldwide.

A Growing Global Network

Biodiversity data in GBIF
Annual biodiversity data made available through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility as of July 2026. Credit to GBIF.

GBIF’s work is carried out through a distributed network of 47 voting country participants and 42 organisational participants, each represented by a national or thematic “node” that mobilises data, builds local capacity, and connects biodiversity communities to GBIF’s infrastructure. More than 2,700 institutions, including museums, universities, government agencies, citizen science platforms, and a growing number of private-sector organisations, have published data through the network, with new publishers joining at a rate of more than two every three days, totalling nearly 3500 organisations involved.

key numerical metrics of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility
Infographic summary of key numerical metrics of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility as of August 2026. See dynamic metrics at GBIF.org and at https://www.gbif.org/analytics/global.

The Biodiversity Data Journal itself is one example of this network in action, as it operates its own GBIF-hosted data portal – one of more than 20 such portals across Pensoft-published journals – providing direct access to hundreds of datasets and hundreds of thousands of occurrence records drawn from the journal’s publications.

Data Supporting Science and Policy

GBIF data mediation
The universe of GBIF data mediation.

GBIF-mediated data now underpin an average of eight new peer-reviewed research papers per day, and have contributed to more than 15,000 publications to date, spanning fields from climate change and food security to public health and invasive species management. An independent 2023 assessment estimated that GBIF generates roughly €12 in societal benefit for every €1 invested, with researcher time savings alone valued at €35 million annually.

The organisation’s impact also extends deeply into international policy. GBIF-mediated data support multiple indicators under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, inform assessments by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), and are increasingly used by the private sector to meet emerging nature-related disclosure requirements.

Adapting to New Kinds of Data

Over 25 years, GBIF has continually expanded to accommodate new sources of biodiversity data – from digitised natural history specimens and citizen science observations to DNA-based records and, most recently, structured survey and monitoring data designed to support large-scale biodiversity tracking. In 2026, GBIF adopted the Catalogue of Life as its taxonomic backbone, the result of a multi-year collaboration to build shared infrastructure for reconciling species names across datasets.

Persistent Gaps Remain

key events of GBIF

A timeline of key events in the history of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Credit to Miller et al., 2026.

Despite this growth, GBIF recognises that several significant challenges remain. The global loss of biodiversity continues to be described as a crisis in major international assessments, even as the data infrastructure has improved. And the data itself continues to reflect long-standing imbalances – regions with high biodiversity, particularly in the Global South, remain underrepresented, while well-studied, charismatic groups such as birds are overrepresented compared to less visible taxa; furthermore, many marine species and hard-to-identify cryptic habitats and organisms remain inadequately documented.

Closing these gaps was part of the original motivation for creating GBIF a quarter-century ago, and it remains valid today. GBIF’s own assessment is that the network cannot resolve these asymmetries alone, doing so will depend on broader shifts in global scientific funding, data culture, and capacity, alongside GBIF’s continued efforts to expand its Participant network and to diversify the types of data it can mobilise.

An additional, ongoing challenge is data heterogeneity and data quality, because GBIF indexes data, rather than directly vetting every record, it relies on its network of data publishers to maintain quality at source, and on users to report issues – a distributed model that keeps the network scalable but is not without friction.

Looking Ahead

capacity development at GBIF.
Capacity development across the Global Biodiversity Information Facility community.  Credit to Miller et al., 2026.

Guided by its 2023–2027 Strategic Framework, GBIF is prioritising continued growth of its Participant network, expanded support for survey and monitoring data, and deeper integration of DNA-derived biodiversity records – all aimed at closing longstanding geographic and taxonomic gaps in digital biodiversity data worldwide.

Original source:

Miller J, Mandeville C, Schigel D, Gamboa Martinez J, Nielsen AM, Sheldon S, Hahn A, Raymond M, Bundgaard-Jensen S, Bagard Laursen M, Copas K, Blissett M, Høfft M, Méndez Hernández F, Noesgaard D, Rodrigues A, Russell L, Stjernegaard Jeppesen T, Elkjær Ørum-Kristensen A, Grosjean M, Waller J, Podolskiy M, Goodson H, Novakovikj S, Frøslev T, Ingenloff K, Sørensen Nilsson A, Svenningsen C, van der Meijden D, Suen A, Hakan Uzun A, Vaskova M, Nielsen C, Marentes Herrera E, Schaldemose Reibke N, Robertson T (2026) The Global Biodiversity Information Facility at 25. Biodiversity Data Journal 14: e208528. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.14.e208528

Pensoft launches ORPHO: A new intelligent workspace for scientific writing

The beta release of an innovative collaborative stand-alone authoring tool transforms manuscript preparation with semantic enrichment and real-time collaboration capabilities.

Scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft Publishers announces the beta launch of ORPHO, a revolutionary online platform designed to streamline collaborative scientific writing and produce AI-ready, future-proof scholarly literature. 

ORPHO presents a significant advancement in scholarly publishing technology, combining intuitive writing features with sophisticated semantic enrichment capabilities. The new platform builds upon Pensoft’s fifteen years of experience as a developer of semantic publishing infrastructure.

Key Features

Within a shared online workspace, researchers can start with built-in customisable templates, create their own or import an existing file. They can then team up with collaborators in real time using track changes, role-based user rights, inline comments, and document-level chat. More significantly, ORPHO automatically structures scientific content according to international publishing standards, making research outputs findable, discoverable, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) once published. 

Unlike its predecessor, the ARPHA Writing Tool, ORPHO is available as a standalone real-time collaborative workspace decoupled from journals hosted on Pensoft’s ARPHA Publishing Platform. Once a manuscript is ready, authors receive AI-FAIR machine-readable content that can be formatted to meet multiple journal requirements at the click of a button.

The platform’s adaptability to domain-specific workflows is currently being piloted in biodiversity science. ORPHO integrates seamlessly with leading biodiversity data aggregators, including the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) and PlutoF, via import and export facilities for structured data, making ORPHO particularly valuable for researchers handling taxonomic, ecological and biodiversity data. 

Taxon names, for example, can be automatically imported and linked through persistent identifiers from sources like the Catalogue of Life (CoL), International Plant Names Index (IPNI), World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) and World Flora Online (WFO).

  • ORPHO: A new intelligent workspace for scientific writing.

Why ORPHO?

The name draws inspiration from multiple sources which reflect the tool’s philosophy and heritage. Named after Orphium: a unique plant genus endemic to South Africa whose sole species (Orphium frutescens) is known as the sea rose, ORPHO reflects the platform’s distinctive nature, heritage, and core philosophy.

It also evokes Orpheus, the legendary musician of ancient Thrace whose home region, the Rhodopi Mountains, lies in present-day Bulgaria, where ORPHO’s developer, Pensoft, is headquartered. The name thus honours the tool’s origins whilst embodying the exceptional creative performance it enables. 

***

Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO of Pensoft, comments:

“We are well aware that researchers today face an overwhelming list of formatting requirements and technical demands in an AI-driven landscape. It is true that rapid technological advancement presents both immense opportunities and mounting complexities for researchers.

We built ORPHO to remove that friction by offering an intuitive, collaborative workspace that lets scientists focus on their research. As a scientific publisher, our mission is to make scholarly publishing a seamless, rewarding experience fit for the modern age.”

The beta release invites researchers, institutions and publishing platforms to trial ORPHO and provide feedback. Access is available at orpho.net.

Pensoft at the 4th BioSyst.EU Meeting 2026

The 4th BioSyst.EU meeting took place in Uppsala, Sweden, from 17 to 19 August 2026, organised by the Swedish Systematics Association, in collaboration with Uppsala University.

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The 4th BioSyst.EU meeting took place in Uppsala, Sweden, from 17 to 19 August 2026, organised by the Swedish Systematics Association, in collaboration with Uppsala University. For three days, the conference brought together European systematists to celebrate the discipline in the very city where it was born, home to Carl Linnaeus and the foundations of modern taxonomy.

BioSyst.EU exists to give individual scientists across Europe a shared platform, working through their national and regional societies rather than institutions. It sits alongside the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF), which represents natural history institutions, and together the two bodies aim to strengthen systematic biology, phylogenetics and biodiversity research across the continent.

This year’s programme combined talks, workshops and symposia with visits to historical sites connected to Linnaeus. The main event was preceded by an early career meeting on Sunday 16 August, which gave students and early career researchers a chance to connect before the conference proper began.

Meeting the community at our booth

Pensoft were delighted to attend with our own booth, where colleagues came to chat about our publishing services, from manuscript to final publication, as well as our tools for managing and publishing taxonomic and biodiversity data. 

Pensoft’s booth at BioSyst.EU, 2026.

It was a great opportunity to introduce our journal portfolio – more than half of which comprises taxonomy and systematics titles – to old friends and new faces alike, including titles such as: 

  • ZooKeys – one of the world’s leading journals for zoological taxonomy and biodiversity research, publishing new species descriptions and revisions across the animal kingdom
  • MycoKeys – dedicated to fungal systematics, taxonomy and biodiversity, supporting mycologists with rapid, richly illustrated publishing
  • PhytoKeys – focused on plant systematics and biodiversity, covering everything from single species descriptions to large-scale floristic studies
  • Metabarcoding and Metagenomics (MBMG) – a journal built around the fast-growing field of DNA-based biodiversity assessment, from environmental DNA to large-scale metagenomic surveys
  • Zoosystematics and Evolution – published with the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, covering zoological systematics, morphology and evolutionary biology
  • Evolutionary Systematics – dedicated to whole-organism biology of extant and fossil animals 

…and many more!

Pensoft’s journal portfolio comprising taxonomy and systematics titles.

It was also a pleasure to meet some of our authors, reviewers and subject editors at the booth!

  • Alice Petzold – subject editor in Natural History Collections and Museomics.
  • Oleksandr Holovachov – author in Biodiversity Data Journal, and Metabarcoding and Metagenomics.
  • Oleksandr Ordynets – author and reviewer for Biodiversity Data Journal, MycoKeys, and Plant Ecology and Evolution.
  • Viktor Hartung – subject editor for Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift.

Conference presentation highlights

One of the undoubted highlights of the conference was the keynote talk by Sandra Knapp, editor-in-chief of PhytoKeys, titled Taming the beasts: strategies for studying megadiversity. Knapp tackled the question: what do we do with genera that contain more than a thousand species?

She subsequently made the case that studying genera properly, from geography to identification, pays dividends for both collaborative science and our understanding of evolution.

  • Sandra Knapp at Pensoft’s booth.
  • Sandra Knapp’s presentation at BioSyst.EU 2026.

Another highlight was the keynote lecture by Paul Hebert, Chair of the MBMG Advisory Board: The End Game – All Species & Their Interactions. Hebert reflected on the tens of millions of multicellular species we share the planet with, most still undescribed and many at risk of disappearing before they are even documented.

Paul Hebert’s presentation at BioSyst.EU 2026.

Among the other talks we attended was by one of our long-time partners, Olaf Banki, on the Catalogue of Life: taxonomic data services and infrastructure for all. Olaf reflected on the initiative’s evolution, from its origins thirty years ago to today, where the Catalogue of Life now serves as the taxonomic reference underpinning close to 4 billion species occurrences mediated through GBIF.

He gave a valuable overview of where the initiative stands: what it offers different user groups, including taxonomists and data infrastructures, where taxonomic data gaps remain, and how the community can contribute going forward. 

Olaf Banki’s presentation at BioSyst.EU 2026.

Notably, Pensoft’s journals are integrated with Catalogue of Life to help list the species of the world. You can find out more about this initiative by accessing the following blog post.

A final highlight was Alexander Edwards’ presentation, titled Where Were You Yesterday? Interrogating Floral Constancy in Bumble Bee Workers Using Pollen Metabarcoding. Edwards presented work using ITS2 pollen metabarcoding to study the foraging behaviour of individually marked Bombus terrestris workers in a semi-natural university garden, sampling pollen non-lethally from returning foragers over several days.

It was particularly nice to catch up with Alexander, having worked with him previously on a guest blog post, The bee’s knees: a new, non-lethal way to study pollinator networks, which explored the same non-lethal sampling approach.

  • Alexander Edwards at Pensoft’s booth.
  • Alexander Edwards’ presentation at BioSyst.EU 2026.

Award winners

And a massive congratulations to all our award winners! In the Best Student Poster category, first prize went to Giada Spagliardi of the University of Toronto for her poster Finding depth at the surface: museomics and species boundaries of bubble-rafting gastropods, while the runner-up prize was awarded to Hannah Cremer of the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Frankfurt, for Long Hidden in Tubes: First Steps Towards Resolving the Filograna/Salmacina Complex (Serpulidae).

In the Best Student Talk category, first prize was awarded to Alexander Edwards of the University of Kassel for his talk Where Were You Yesterday? Interrogating Floral Constancy in Bumble Bee Workers Using Pollen Metabarcoding, with the runner-up prize going to Tina Kiedaisch of the University of Munich (LMU) for Intercontinental dispersal, ecological shifts and repeated origins of C4 photosynthesis shaped the evolution of Amaranthaceae s.s..

The awardees at BioSys.EU 2026.

An excursion to Linnaeus’ Hammarby

On 20 August, participants also had the option to join an excursion to Hammarby, Linnaeus’ summer house just outside Uppsala. It is a rare chance to step inside an authentic 18th century Swedish manor that reveals both the private life of Linnaeus and the scientific work he carried out there! 

Pensoft notably visited the University of Uppsala Botanical Garden, also known as the Linnaean Garden, where Olof Rudbeck the Elder and Carl von Linnaeus worked:

  • The Linnaean Garden, 2026.

Until next time

The 4th BioSyst.EU meeting was a fitting tribute to the roots of systematics, held in the city where the discipline effectively began. From megadiverse genera to pollen metabarcoding and the future of biodiversity monitoring, the talks reflected how dynamic the field remains. We were delighted to be part of it, and to spend three days connecting with the scientific community. We look forward to the next BioSyst.EU meeting!

Catching up with Michael Schmitt at Pensoft’s booth – our subject editor for Zookeys and Arthropods systematics and phylogeny.

Follow us on Bluesky, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn for future conference updates.

Pensoft at SERE2026: Connecting Projects, Publications and People in Brest

Pensoft attended the 15th European Conference on Ecological Restoration (SERE2026) in Brest, France, where it presented a selection of EU-funded projects and scientific journals.

From 24 to 28 August 2026, Pensoft joined around 600 researchers and professionals at the 15th European Conference on Ecological Restoration (SERE2026) in Brest, France, bringing together the ecological restoration community to share knowledge, strengthen collaborations and explore new approaches to restoring ecosystems across Europe.

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Hosted by the University of Brest in collaboration with the French Ecological Restoration Network (REVER) and the European Chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER-Europe), SERE2026 provided a vibrant meeting point for researchers, practitioners and policymakers working across ecological restoration. The conference covered a broad range of topics, including wetlands, coastal and marine ecosystems, ecological networks and the implementation of European restoration policies.

Pensoft was there with a selection of EU-funded projects and open-access journals, offering conference participants the chance to discover new research, explore project results and learn more about opportunities to publish and share their work.

Pensoft at SERE 2026.

A showcase of Pensoft projects

The Pensoft team presented materials from a diverse group of EU-funded projects, reflecting the wide range of environmental research and collaboration supported through the Pensoft network.

Among the projects showcased were FERRO, SpongeBoost, BioAgora, ForestPaths, EUFAWREADY, eLTER, SELINA, COAST SCAPES and COOP4CBD.

The projects cover a broad spectrum of topics, from biodiversity and ecosystem restoration to forest resilience, environmental governance, ecosystem monitoring and nature conservation. Their presence at SERE2026 offered researchers an opportunity to discover ongoing initiatives and see how scientific knowledge is being translated into practical approaches for addressing environmental challenges.

The project materials attracted interest throughout the conference, with participants stopping by to learn more about individual initiatives and explore their latest activities and results.

From ecological restoration to open-access publishing

Alongside the projects, Pensoft presented a selection of its journals and publishing platforms.

Visitors could discover titles including Nature Conservation, One Ecosystem, Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO), Agricultural and Environmental Modelling, Biodiversity Data Journal, Check List, Journal of Regeneration and NeoBiota, alongside several other journals from Pensoft’s open-access, peer-reviewed scholarly portfolio.

The broad selection reflected the interdisciplinary nature of ecological restoration itself. Researchers working on biodiversity, ecosystems, conservation, environmental modelling, species diversity and regeneration could all find publication venues relevant to their work.

There was considerable interest in the journals throughout the conference, with discussions ranging from publishing research articles and project outputs to discovering new ways of sharing scientific data, ideas and results with the wider research community.

Celebrating excellent science

Scientific exchange was at the heart of SERE2026, and participants also had the opportunity to recognise some of the strongest contributions presented during the conference.

Several awards were presented based on votes from conference participants, highlighting outstanding talks and presentations.

Pensoft was pleased to contribute to these celebrations with the Best Talk Award. The award recognises an exceptional conference presentation and comes with a special prize: a free publication in a Pensoft journal.

This time around, the award went to Chloé Dagnelie of Gembloux AgrobioTech for her presentation: “Spontaneous succession under soil and landscape constraints: dispersal filtering and urban species pools shape brownfield true bugs communities”

By supporting awards such as this, Pensoft aims to encourage clear, engaging and impactful scientific communication while helping researchers share their work through open-access publishing.

Connecting research, restoration and communication

SERE2026 offered an inspiring setting for conversations about the future of ecological restoration and the role of research in supporting healthier and more resilient ecosystems.

Pensoft Publishers at 15th European Conference on Ecological Restoration

For Pensoft, the conference was also an opportunity to bring together several strands of its work: supporting EU-funded research projects, publishing scientific knowledge through open-access journals and creating opportunities for researchers to connect, communicate and collaborate.

The strong interest in both the projects and journals showcased in Brest was a reminder of the value of bringing science and scientific communication together in one place.

As Europe moves towards ambitious restoration goals, strengthening the connections between research, practice, policy and communication will be essential. Events such as SERE2026 provide an important space for these connections to grow.

Pensoft was delighted to be part of the ecological restoration community in Brest and looks forward to continuing these conversations at future events.

From Scroll to Science: How an iNaturalist Photo Revealed an Endangered Mussel in a BC Watershed

A photo on iNaturalist sparked a three-year research project that led to the discovery of a new subpopulation of the endangered Rocky Mountain Ridged Mussel in Canada.

In 2023, someone photographed a discarded shell near a boat-towing business in Port Coquitlam and uploaded it to iNaturalist, the online citizen-science forum. That single post set off a three-year scientific search and ended up rewriting the known range of one of Canada’s most endangered freshwater species. 

The shell belonged to the Rocky Mountain Ridged Mussel (Gonidea angulata), a large, distinct bivalve known for its thick-walled, trapezoidal shell and a sharp ridge running from its dorsal margin to its posterior edge.

Rocky Mountain Ridged Mussel, Dominion Road, August 8, 2025. Photo Angie Coulter.

In Canada, it’s assessed as endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). It’s also recommended for federal listing under the Species at Risk Act. Until now, its known Canadian range was thought to be confined to the south-central Okanagan watershed, with only vague historical records elsewhere in the Kootenays, Vancouver Island, and Cache Creek. 

That’s what made the Port Coquitlam shell so strange. The Fraser River watershed, where it turned up, has no present-day aquatic connection to the Okanagan system. So how did it get there? 

A photo that sparked two years of research

Because the shell surfaced near a boat-towing business, researchers from the BC Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship and the BC Conservation Foundation couldn’t rule out a simpler explanation: that it had hitched a ride from the Okanagan on a recreational boat trailer. 

  • Researchers at Surrey Bend Regional Park,  Sept 10, 2024. Photo by Kihan Yoon-Henderson.
    Researchers at Surrey Bend Regional Park,  Sept 10, 2024. Photo by Kihan Yoon-Henderson.
  • Sampling in Harrison River, September 2025. Photo by Jennifer Heron.
    Sampling in Harrison River, September 2025. Photo by Jennifer Heron.
  • Siena Achal and Kihan Yoon-Henderson on field work. Photo by Jennifer Heron, Pitt River, Dominion Ave., Sept 9, 2024 
    Siena Achal and Kihan Yoon-Henderson on field work. Photo by Jennifer Heron, Pitt River, Dominion Ave., Sept 9, 2024 

But, to prove that the mussel actually belonged in the Fraser watershed the researchers had to find live, animals in their natural habitat.

  • Pitt River, Reichenbach Rd., Sept 16, 2024. Photo by Jennifer Heron.
    Pitt River, Reichenbach Rd., Sept 16, 2024. Photo by Jennifer Heron.
  • Kihan Yoon-Henderson, Jennifer Heron, Siena Achal, Mike Badry, Lea Gelling and Purnima Govindarajulu at Grant Narrows – Pitt-Addington WMA, Oct 9, 2024. Photo by Kihan Yoon-Henderson.
    Kihan Yoon-Henderson, Jennifer Heron, Siena Achal, Mike Badry, Lea Gelling and Purnima Govindarajulu at Grant Narrows – Pitt-Addington WMA, Oct 9, 2024. Photo by Kihan Yoon-Henderson.

So began a major field effort. Between 2023 and 2025, the team surveyed 62 sites and logged more than 158 cumulative hours searching the watershed, contending with busy marine traffic, fast-moving and deep water, rising tides, and the seasonal freshet.

They worked the shifting, tidal shoreline using beach walking, wading, and snorkeling surveys. And because the water was frequently clouded by disturbed silt and mud, the researchers had to get creative, constructing a DIY dipping tool by duct-taping a metal mesh deep-fryer basket to a broom handle. This device allowed them to scoop up submerged objects and let the silt wash away, making it easy to confirm the identity of any mussels they retrieved.

The find

The persistence paid off. About 5.4 kilometers upstream from where the original shell was found, the team confirmed a live, subpopulation – 81 specimens in total across the three-year search.

Most were tucked into deep pools that become isolated from the main river channel at low tide, along a stretch of flat mud beach on the west side of the lower Pitt River, near a public trail between Prairie Avenue and Dominion Avenue.

Rocky Mountain Ridged Mussel, Pitt River, Prairie Ave., Sept 18, 2024, Photo by Jennifer Heron.

The discovery, now published in the open-access, peer-reviewed Biodiversity Data Journal, marks a significant range extension for the species into the Fraser River watershed – the first confirmed live population outside the Okanagan.

  • Bert Brink Wildlife Management Area, July 2025. Photo Jennifer Heron.
    Bert Brink Wildlife Management Area, July 2025. Photo Jennifer Heron.
  • Domion Road, August 8, 2026. Photo Kihan Yoon-Henderson.
    Domion Road, August 8, 2026. Photo Kihan Yoon-Henderson.
  • Under Mission Bridge, July 2025. Photo Jennifer Heron
    Under Mission Bridge, July 2025. Photo Jennifer Heron

However, the find doesn’t ease the species’ conservation status. Because this subpopulation is hydrologically isolated from both the Okanagan watershed and the nearest known populations in Washington State’s Chehalis River, the overall conservation concern for the species remains extremely high.

Whether the newly found subpopulation is genetically distinct from other populations – a question with real implications for how it’s managed and protected – is still unanswered; that’s the next piece of research the team is pursuing. 

Nonetheless, this breakthrough stands as a testament to the value of citizen science. The upload of a single photograph to iNaturalist sparked a big field survey, proving that community-based monitoring and public stewardship can directly help protect B.C.’s most vulnerable freshwater species.

Original source:

Heron J, Jessome R, Yoon-Henderson K, Achal S (2026) Range extension and natural history notes on Rocky Mountain Ridged Mussel Gonidea angulata (Lea, 1838) (Mollusca, Unionidae) in Canada. Biodiversity Data Journal 14: e191607. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.14.e191607 

Pensoft Joins the Global Lichenology Community at IAL10 in Trieste

The 10th Symposium of the International Association for Lichenology took place in Trieste, where Pensoft showcased its plant science and mycology journal portfolio.

Last week, the 10th Symposium of the International Association for Lichenology (IAL10) took place in Trieste, Italy, from 26 to 31 July 2026, organised by the International Association for Lichenology, the University of Trieste’s Department of Life Sciences and the Italian Lichenological Society.

Held once every four years, the symposium is an important event for the global lichenology community, and this edition proved more popular than ever, drawing over 350 participants from around the world – more than double the number originally expected.

Lichenology is a wonderfully niche field, but IAL10 showed just how far-reaching and collaborative the community is. Delegates travelled from every corner of the globe to discuss taxonomy, lichen-associated microorganisms, biodiversity and conservation, ecophysiology, environmental biomonitoring, and cultural heritage preservation. 

Pensoft’s stand at IAL10

  • Maria Kolesnikova, our Head of Marketing, Sales and Events, at the Pensoft stand at IAL10.

We were pleased to have our own stand at the symposium, where we showcased our journals in plant science and mycology, including:

  • MycoKeys: publishes papers on the monophyletic kingdom Fungi containing taxonomic or ecological data on any taxon of any geological age from any part of the world with no limit to manuscript size;
  • IMA Fungus: considers contributions from all areas of mycology expected to be of interest to the wider mycological community, from basic research to applications
  • PhytoKeys: publishes papers in systematic Botany containing taxonomic/floristic data on any taxon of any geological age from any part of the world 
  • Italian Botanist: publishes original research covering all fields of Botany in its wider sense, including Mycology, ranging from molecular to ecosystem studies
  • Biodiversity Data Journal: publishes papers in biodiversity science containing taxonomic, floristic/faunistic, morphological, genomic, phylogenetic, ecological or environmental data on any taxon of any geological age from any part of the world 
  • Vegetation Classification and Survey: publishes original papers that develop new vegetation typologies as well as applied studies that use such typologies, for example, in vegetation mapping, ecosystem modelling, nature conservation, land use management or monitoring 
  • Pensoft’s journals in plant science and mycology.

It was a great opportunity to speak directly with researchers and students about publishing their work, and to reconnect with authors and editors already part of our community.

  • Garima Singh – Subject Editor and Author in MycoKeys.
  • Muhammad Usman, Author in MycoKeys.
  • Edyta Mazur – Author in Mycokeys.
  • Pier Luigi Nimis – Subject Editor and Reviewer in MycoKeys.

Talks that caught our attention

Among the many excellent presentations at IAL10, two in particular stood out to us:

  • Juri Nascimbene presenting his talk at IAL10 – Historical lichen collections as a time capsule.
  • Juri Nascimbene at Pensoft’s stand.

Juri Nascimbene, a subject editor and author at MycoKeys and an author for Italian Botanist, Vegetation Classification and Survey, and Biodiversity Data Journal, presented on the historical lichen collections held at the University of Bologna’s herbarium (BOLO). His talk explored how these collections, some dating back to the work of Ulisse Aldrovandi in the sixteenth century, allow researchers to track species distributions across centuries. 

Using material such as Antonio Bertoloni’s Hortus Siccus Florae Italicae, which contains 850 georeferenced lichen specimens, Nascimbene’s team has been able to trace the long-term presence of species such as Lobaria pulmonaria in the chestnut groves of the Northern Apennines, and the disappearance of cold-adapted species such as Alectoria ochroleuca from high-altitude sites.

It was a fascinating look at how historical herbaria can inform our understanding of global change today!

  • Martin Grube presenting his talk at IAL10 – Lichens in motion.

We also attended a talk by Martin Grube, a reviewer and author at MycoKeys, who challenged the common perception of lichens as slow-growing organisms. His presentation examined the hygroscopic movements lichens undergo as they take up and lose water, and the mechanical stresses this creates within their thalli.

Grube introduced tools for measuring these mechanical properties and discussed what they might reveal about the evolution and function of lichen structures, thus offering a compelling primer on comparative thallus mechanics.

A new special issue in MycoKeys

While at IAL10, we were pleased to announce a new special issue in MycoKeys: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the International Association for Lichenology (IAL10), edited by Mauro Tretiach, Fabio Candotto Carniel, and Lucia Muggia. The special issue will bring together original research articles and short communications covering the full breadth of lichen symbiosis research. We look forward to seeing the community’s latest work published there.

  • Announcement of a special issue in MycoKeys at IAL10.

Celebrating the award winners

Congratulations to all of this year’s IAL10 award winners:

Group photograph of the award winners at IAL10.

Best Posters

  • Honorata Wacławek, “Phylogenetic insights into freshwater Gyalidea (Gomphillaceae, Graphidales) from the high Andes of Bolivia”
  • Ariel Sebastián Udaeta Sanchez, “First axenic cultures of saxicolous lichens from Tucumán (NW Argentina): growth timelines and representation of under-studied neotropical lineages”

Best Flash Talks

  • Ciaran Kelly, “Comparative genomic analyses of antimicrobial proteins encoded by lichen-forming fungi”
  • Anna Pasinato, “The metabolic divide: fungal genomes reveal an unequal distribution of biosynthetic gene clusters”

Best Oral Presentations

  • Victoria K., “Hidden cohabitants: metagenomic insights into global occurrence patterns of black fungi associated with lichens”
  • Diego Garfias Gallegos, “Central metabolism and development are rewired in lichenized cyanobacteria”

Until next time

IAL10 was a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with the lichenology community, and we were delighted to meet so many authors from our journals in person. Thank you to everyone who stopped by our stand, attended a talk with us, or simply shared a conversation about lichens.

We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the Italian Lichenological Society and seeing you all again at the next symposium. 

Follow us on Bluesky, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn for future conference updates.

Pensoft at ESA 2026: Connecting with the Ecology Community in Salt Lake City, USA

Between 26-31 July, Pensoft Publishers joined more than 2,600 ecologists, researchers, and conservation professionals in Salt Lake City for the 111th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA2026).

Pensoft Publishers joined more than 2,600 ecologists, researchers, and conservation professionals in Salt Lake City for the 111th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America (ESA2026) between 26-31 July.

Table of Contents
  1. Ecology in an Era of Uncertainty
  2. The Opening Session
  3. Pensoft’s booth
  4. Two Interactive Activities at Our Booth
    1. The Pensoft Species Quiz
    2. The Agricultural and Environmental Modelling Poster Award
  5. Looking Ahead

Ecology in an Era of Uncertainty

  • Opening ceremony of ESA 2026.
    Opening ceremony of ESA 2026.
  • Opening ceremony of ESA 2026.
    Opening ceremony of ESA 2026.

This year’s conference theme, “Ecology in an Era of Uncertainty,” could not have felt more timely. Uncertainty is nothing new to ecological research – it’s built into measurements, mechanisms, and predictions.

But new sources of uncertainty are now reshaping the field: the rise of artificial intelligence, post-pandemic shifts in career development, and growing instability in research funding. Throughout the week, the ESA community came together not only to share cutting-edge ecological research, but also to think collectively about how to navigate these emerging challenges – trading multidisciplinary, creative solutions to keep the field resilient in the face of what’s next.

The Opening Session

The Grand Ballroom was packed for the opening session, where Conference Chairs Daniel Stover and Andrea Swei welcomed attendees. Despite a challenging year for funding and travel, the 111th annual meeting of ESA 2026 hosted 2,600 registered attendees 330 sessions and 884 posters,

The opening address was delivered by Diane Pitaki, Chief Scientist and Vice President for Science at the National Wildlife Federation, who spoke about ecology standing at a crossroads amid the biodiversity crisis and shifting political headwinds, urging the community to actively “defend conservation science.”

Among the meeting’s standout moments was the plenary from Tanya Berger-Wolf, Professor of Computer Science and Ecology at Ohio State University and a leading figure in AI for ecology and biodiversity.

Notably, Berger-Wolf will be a keynote speaker at TDWG 2026 in Oslo (20-25 September) – where Pensoft Publishers will once again be exhibiting, so stay tuned for future updates.

Pensoft’s booth

Situated right at the entrance of the exhibition hall, Pensoft’s booth revelled in attention from attendees throughout the week.

  • Pensoft's team at ESA 2026 in Salt Palace Convention Center.
    Pensoft’s team at ESA 2026 in Salt Palace Convention Center.
  • Pensoft's busy stand at the 111th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America.
    Pensoft’s busy stand at the 111th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America.
  • Pensoft's busy stand at the 111th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America.
    Pensoft’s busy stand at the 111th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America.
  • The beautiful Denitsa Peneva's illustrations at ESA 2026.
    The beautiful Denitsa Peneva’s illustrations at ESA 2026.

A particular highlight was our trio of diamond open-access journals – free to publish in and free to read – that drew considerable interest from attendees:

  • Individual-Based Ecology promotes a distinctive individual-based perspective on ecology, aiming to bridge individual behaviour and broader ecological patterns.
  • Advances in Pollinator Research is designed as an innovative platform for the full spectrum of pollinator science, from pollination ecology and pollinator-plant interactions to molecular ecology, conservation, and more.
  • Agricultural and Environmental Modelling (AEM), meanwhile, offers an innovative approach to publishing, dedicated to advancing both the science and practice of modelling across agriculture, food systems, natural resources, and environmental sciences.
  • Brochure of the diamond open-access Individual-Based Ecology Journal.
    Brochure of the diamond open-access Individual Based Ecology Journal.
  • Close up photo of the Advances in Pollinator Research brochure at ESA 2026.
    Close up photo of the Advances in Pollinator Research brochure at ESA 2026.
  • Nicole Nogoy, managing editor of Agricultural and Environmental Modelling at ESA 2026.
    Nicole Nogoy, managing editor of Agricultural and Environmental Modelling at ESA 2026.

Attendees curious about AEM had the chance to speak directly with its Managing Editor, Nicole Nogoy, who was on site throughout the conference to discuss publishing opportunities and promote the journal’s search for Subject Editors. 

The booth also gave visitors a window into the rest of Pensoft’s open-access portfolio. On the conservation side, that meant Nature Conservation and Neotropical Biology and Conservation; on the ecosystem side, One Ecosystem, Frontiers of Biogeography, and NeoBiota. 

  • NeoBiota brochure presented at ESA 2026.
    NeoBiota brochure presented at ESA 2026.
  • Neotropical Biology and Conservation brochure at ESA 2026.
    Neotropical Biology and Conservation brochure at ESA 2026.

Attendees also had the chance to learn more about our diamond open-access journal Estuarine Management and Technologies, which was accepted into the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) earlier this year. 

Estuarine Management and Technologies brochure.

Rounding out the display were several more specialised titles: Biodiversity Data Journal and Metabarcoding and Metagenomics; Quite popular amongst the visitors were also our our fungi-focused IMA Fungus and MycoKeys journals; and our vegetation titles, Vegetation Classification and Survey and Vegetation Ecology and Diversity.

We also introduced attendees to our newest addition, the diamond open-access Journal of Regeneration. For those interested in sharing early-stage research or project outcomes, Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) offered another avenue worth exploring, publishing everything from project proposals and data to policy briefs and null results.

Those looking for a new publisher or white-label solutions had the opportunity to explore ARPHA, Pensoft’s own publishing platform, which supports the full journey from manuscript writing and peer review to publication, dissemination, and archiving – all in one seamless workflow. 

Combined brochure of EU-Funded project in which Pensoft participates.

Beyond the journals and publishing solutions, the team took the opportunity to spotlight some of Pensoft’s ongoing EU-funded projects, including our pollination initiatives and our continued work with eLTER. 

Two Interactive Activities at Our Booth

Building on the success of interactive formats at previous events, namely the Fortune Wheel at the 8th European Congress of Conservation Biology in Leiden, our team brought two activities to ESA2026.

The Pensoft Species Quiz

Attendees taking our fun quiz at ESA 2026.

This time around, our team created “Pensoft Species Quiz,” challenging booth visitors to identify the correct Latin name for a series of species beautifully illustrated by Denitsa Peneva. Being more than just a fun activity, it became a natural conversation starter – leading into deeper discussions about Pensoft’s journals, services, and potential collaborations with attendees.

  • Some of the winners from our quiz at ESA 2026.
    Some of the winners from our quiz at ESA 2026.
  • Some of the winners from our quiz at ESA 2026.
    Some of the winners from our quiz at ESA 2026.
  • Some of the winners from our quiz at ESA 2026.
    Happy winners from our interactive quiz game at ESA 2026.
  • Attendees interacting with our fun quiz.
    Attendees interacting with our fun quiz.

The Agricultural and Environmental Modelling Poster Award

AEM’s Managing Editor – Nicole Nogoy ran a poster competition at the meeting, and it turned out to be one of the highlights of our week. Three researchers stood out:

  • Julian Resasco (University of Colorado, Boulder) took home the prize for overall best presentation with a hand-drawn comic-book poster on climate change effects on Basque country thistles;
  • Gwendolyn Lloyd (Indiana University) impressed us with her research on arthropods and mites in agricultural soils;
  • Emily Redding (Fort Hays State University, KS) joined in with a poster on fire suppression’s effects on Juniper-dependent bird species, having been inspired to bring modelling into her own research. 

We also took part in a raffle organised by ESA, to which each exhibitor contributed a prize.

  • Kanchana Balasubramanian one of the winners of Pensoft Publishers' raffle prizes at ESA2026.
    Kanchana Balasubramanian one of the winners of Pensoft Publishers’ raffle prizes at ESA2026.
  • Elizabeth Afkhami Searcy received our book "Mapping Ecosystem Services" as part of the Ecological Society of America's conference raffle.
    Elizabeth Afkhami Searcy received our book “Mapping Ecosystem Services” as part of the Ecological Society of America’s conference raffle.

Looking Ahead

ESA2026 was a strong reminder of just how much energy – and uncertainty – is currently shaping the ecology community. Between thought-provoking plenaries on AI and conservation science, engaging conversations sparked by our species quiz, and the enthusiasm we saw around the AEM poster competition, it was a week full of meaningful connections for Pensoft.

We’re already looking forward to the next time, and we hope you’re looking forward to it, too!

Keep up with future updates and news by following us on Bluesky, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn.

Connecting Science and Conservation: Pensoft at the 21st Eurasian Grassland Conference

As a longstanding supporter of vegetation science publishing, and publisher of Vegetation Classification and Survey, Pensoft was proud to sponsor EGC 2026 and attend throughout the week.

From 19 to 23 July 2026, Sofia hosted the 21st Eurasian Grassland Conference (EGC 2026), organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG), a working group of the International Association for Vegetation Science (IAVS). EDGG is dedicated to research on, and the conservation of, natural and semi-natural grasslands across the Palaearctic biogeographic realm, spanning any taxonomic group, whether plants and vegetation, animals or fungi.

This year’s conference was held under the theme “Connecting science and conservation for grassland sustainability”, with the aim of highlighting how research into grassland ecosystems connects with management practices and conservation goals on the ground.

Grasslands, particularly species-rich semi-natural grasslands and Eurasian steppes, are among the most threatened habitat types in one of the most heavily urbanised and intensively managed regions in the world, despite providing a wide range of ecosystem services. Bringing scientific knowledge together with conservation practice was therefore a central thread running through the week.

The conference was hosted by the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research (IBER) at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. IBER conducts research across fundamental and applied ecology, biodiversity, nature conservation and the sustainable use of biological resources. The institute also provides scientific and methodological support to state institutions and NGOs, making it a fitting host for a conference concerned with the practical application of grassland science.

As a longstanding supporter of vegetation science publishing, and publisher of Vegetation Classification and Survey (VCS), one of IAVS’s official journals, Pensoft was proud to sponsor EGC 2026 and attend with an information stand throughout the week.

  • Pensoft’s stand at the 21st Eurasian Grassland Conference.

A gathering of the grassland community

EGC 2026 brought together around 60 participants, from early-career researchers to established names in vegetation science. Among the attendees were several members of the editorial board of VCS, including Editors-in-Chief Idoia Biurrun and Jürgen Dengler, as well as members of the IAVS council:

We were also delighted to catch up with authors who have published with us across several of our journals, including Biodiversity Data Journal (Naim Berisha), PhytoKeys (Marcin Nobel) and VCS (Arkadiusz Nowak).

  • Naim Berisha, an author in BDJ, at Pensoft’s stand at EGC 2026.
  • Marcin Nobis, a subject editors for PhytoKeys, at Pensoft’s stand at EGC 2026.
  • Arkadiusz Nowak, an author and editorial board member for VCS, at Pensoft’s stand at EGC 2026.

Our stand attracted a steady flow of visitors over the course of the week:

  • Conference participants visiting Pensoft’s stand at the 21st Eurasian Grassland Conference.
  • Pensoft’s journal portfolio in vegetation science.

Throughout the event, we shared our vegetation science portfolio, including VCS and Vegetation, Ecology and Diversity (VED), with strong additional interest in our following open-access journals:

  • Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) – a community peer-reviewed journal, designed to accelerate publishing, dissemination and sharing of biodiversity-related data of any kind.
  • MycoKeys – dedicated to the taxonomy, phylogeny, biogeography, evolution and ecology of the fungal kingdom, including lichens, and publishing everything from new species descriptions to checklists, monographs and methodology papers.
  • Nature Conservation – a rapid, peer-reviewed journal spanning all aspects of nature conservation, from populations to whole ecosystems, and from microorganisms and fungi to higher plants and animals.

A new special feature on the way

We were pleased to learn, just ahead of the conference, of a forthcoming VCS special feature tied to the event: “Vegetation of the Balkan Peninsula”, edited by Jürgen Dengler, Erwin Bergmeier and Urban Šilc.

The special feature welcomes contributions on any vegetation type from the Balkan Peninsula, including syntaxon revisions at national or supranational level, regional vegetation monographs, synthetic overviews of a country’s or region’s syntaxa, nomenclatural proposals, habitat typologies and applications, and long and short database reports.

VCS offers Gold Open Access publishing, holds a Journal Impact Factor of 2.7, and provides reduced article processing charges for IAVS members, with the option of complete waivers. Further details on the special feature will be announced soon on the VegSciBlog and across Vegetation Classification and Survey’s channels.

Scientific highlights

The five-day scientific programme was organised around five sessions: patterns, classification and biogeography of Palaearctic grasslands; grasslands of the Balkan Peninsula; animals in Palaearctic grasslands; innovative methods, experimental approaches and open science in grassland research; and global change, conservation, restoration and management of Palaearctic grasslands.

  • Participants at the 21st Eurasian Grassland Conference.
  • Jürgen Dengler – Global change in European grasslands: insights from local to continental studies.
  • Anna Kuzemko – Impact ofmilitary actions on the steppe ecosystems of Ukraine.

One of the highlights of the week was our own Head of Journal Development and PR, Iva Boyadzhieva, presenting on how Pensoft supports FAIR publishing for biodiversity and conservation research. Her talk set out how, as biodiversity and sustainability research gains momentum through greater international and interdisciplinary collaboration and the pressures of an unfolding environmental crisis, bridging scientific knowledge and conservation practice has become ever more critical.

  • Iva Boyadzhieva presenting – “At the forefront of FAIR publishing for biodiversity and conservation research”.

We also enjoyed Editor-in-Chief of VCS Jürgen Dengler’s talk on global change in European grasslands, which drew on regional resurveys of historic vegetation plots, combined analyses of multiple resurvey datasets, and decades of plot data from the European Vegetation Archive (EVA).

Anna Kuzemko’s talk on the impact of military actions on the steppe ecosystems of Ukraine was another highlight of the week. Her research offered a valuable basis for prioritising and planning the restoration of Ukraine’s damaged steppe habitats going forward.

  • Anna Kuzemko – Impact of military actions on the steppe ecosystems of Ukraine.

Awards

Pensoft also sponsored a best presentation and poster competition at the conference. Best Presentation was awarded to Sara Nigro for her talk “Climate and management changes drive semi-natural grassland community assembly over twenty years”, based on the resurvey of 49 vegetation plots in central Italy over two decades, revealing how climatic warming and shifting management practices are reshaping mountain semi-natural grasslands.

Best Poster went to Nadiia Skobel for “Drivers of vascular plant diversity in cultural heritage sites: a case study of old cemeteries (southern Ukraine)”, which showcased how old cemeteries in the grass steppe zone of southern Ukraine act as important refuges for native and steppe specific flora amid widespread habitat loss elsewhere in the region.

Looking ahead

EGC 2026 offered a valuable opportunity to connect with the authors, editors and researchers who make up the vegetation science community, and to see first hand how grassland research is being put to work for conservation across the Palaearctic. The next Eurasian Grassland Conference will take place in 2027 in Dilijan, Armenia – stay tuned for further updates!

  • Closing ceremony of the 21st EurasianGrassland Conference.

Follow us on Bluesky, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn for more future updates.

A New Checklist For The Birds Of Calabria: 363 Species At Mediterranean Crossroads

Calabria’s updated bird checklist now lists 363 species, 43 more than in 1993, including Italy’s first documented breeding White-rumped Swift and continued Egyptian Vulture nesting.

Guest blog post by Stazione Ornitologica Calabrese (StOrCal)

Calabria, the toe of the Italian peninsula, lies between the Tyrrhenian and Ionian seas, a short crossing from Sicily and the North African coast. That position has long made it a place where birds from very different regions turn up. Yet its avifauna had not been reviewed in full for more than thirty years.

Our study in Biodiversity Data Journal brings that picture up to date. Drawing on published papers, technical reports, ringing bulletins, museum specimens and validated citizen-science records up to 31 December 2025, we compiled an updated checklist of 363 species and nine subspecies.

That is 43 species more than the previous regional list of 320 (Scebba et al. 1993). None of the older records was dropped, so the additions represent a real gain in regional knowledge.

White-rumped Swift Apus caffer
White-rumped Swift, whose first Italian and central-Mediterranean breeding was documented in Calabria (Pucci et al. 2022). Photo credit: Mario Pucci.

One addition stands out. At an inland site in the province of Crotone, White-rumped Swift (Apus caffer) was found nesting, the first documented breeding of the species in Italy and in the central Mediterranean Basin (Pucci et al. 2022). An African swift breeding this far north suggests Calabria may be a bridgehead for Afro-Iberian species reaching Europe.

Bird ringing
Bird ringing at Punta Alice, where several of the region’s rare vagrants were first detected. Photo credit: Mario Pucci

Most of the other new entries tell a quieter story. Thirty-five of the 43 additions are accidental or vagrant birds, and they point to decades of more systematic fieldwork rather than to genuine range change. Targeted ringing at coastal stations such as Punta Alice (Crotone) and San Michele di Cetraro (Cosenza) has turned up Siberian warblers and flycatchers, among them Pallas’s Leaf Warbler, Dusky Warbler and Red-flanked Bluetail, that would otherwise pass unnoticed. In all, the vagrants recorded in Calabria come from Asia, Africa, northern Europe and even North America, a spread that makes the region a meeting point of separate migration systems.

The checklist also shows what is at stake for conservation. Of the 363 species, 125 are listed in Annex I of the EU Birds Directive, and national Red List categories are available for 230, including nine Critically Endangered.

Egyptian Vulture Neophron percnopterus
Egyptian Vulture, one of the Critically Endangered raptors still breeding in Calabria. Photo credit: Pierpaolo Storino

Most of the Critically Endangered birds depend on wetlands, tied to a small and fragmented network of coastal marshes. Among the region’s emblematic raptors is the Egyptian Vulture (Neophron percnopterus), still breeding in Calabria but represented in Italy by a small population with worrying fluctuations in the number of breeding birds, a reminder of how precarious the country’s cliff-nesting and scavenging raptors remain.

The full dataset is openly available on Zenodo, and the work is coordinated by the Stazione Ornitologica Calabrese (StOrCal), which brings the region’s observers together under shared standards. Much is still missing: the inland massifs of Pollino, Sila and Aspromonte remain under-surveyed, and breeding densities are poorly known for most species. The checklist gives that work a verifiable point to build on.

Original source:

Urso S, Martino G, Muscianese E, Policastrese M, Pucci M, Vena M, Storino P (2026) Updated checklist of the birds of Calabria (southern Italy). Biodiversity Data Journal 14: e195967. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.14.e195967