Once you know where to look for them, lichens are everywhere! These composite organisms – fungal and photosynthetic partners joined into a greater whole, can survive on a vast array of surfaces, from rocks and trees to bare ground and buildings. They are known from every continent, and almost certainly every land mass on planet Earth; some species have even survived exposure to the exterior of the International Space Station. This hardy nature has long interested researchers studying what life could survive on Mars, and the astrobiologists studying life on Earth as an analog of our planetary neighbour. In the deserts surrounding two Mars analog stations in North America, lichens comprise such an important part of the local ecosystems that they inspired a biodiversity assessment with a unique twist: this collections-based inventory took place during a simulated mission to Mars!
Crew Biologist Anushree Srivastava collecting lichens near the Mars Desert Research Station while wearing a simulated spacesuit, an important part of analog space missions at this research site. Photo credit: Mars 160 Crew/The Mars Society
The Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, USA (on Ute and Paiute Territory), and the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in Nunavut, Canada (in Inuit Nunangat, the Inuit Homeland) are simulated Martian habitats operated by The Mars Society, where crews participate in dress rehearsals for crewed Martian exploration. While learning what it would take to live and work on our planetary neighbour, these “Martians” frequently study the deserts at both sites, often exploring techniques for documenting microbial life and their biosignatures as a prelude to deploying these tools and methods off world. These studies are enhanced by a comprehensive understanding of the ecosystems being studied, even if they are full of Earthbound life. During the Mars 160 – a set of twin missions to both Utah and Nunavut in 2016 and 2017 – our team undertook a floristic survey of the lichen biodiversity present at each site.
The Mars Desert Research Station is nestled in amongst the red sandstone hills of southeast Utah, USA, in a geological analog to Mars. Photo credit: Paul Sokoloff/Canadian Museum of Nature
During simulated extra-vehicular activities, Mars 160 mission specialists wearing simulated spacesuits scouted out various habitats at both stations, seeking out lichen species growing in various microhabitats. Collecting over 150 specimens, these samples were “returned to Earth”, and identified at the National Herbarium of Canada at the Canadian Museum of Nature. Through morphological examination, investigations of internal anatomy and chemistry, and DNA barcoding, “Mission Support” identified 35 lichen species from the Mars Desert Research Station, and 13 species from the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station.
Rich lichen communities are abundant in the deserts surrounding the Mars Desert Research Station, with visible crusts being one part of a vibrant ecosystem. Photo credit: Paul Sokoloff/Canadian Museum of Nature
These species, along with photographs and a synopsis of their identifying characteristics, are summarized in a new paper out now in the open-access journal Check List. This new annotated checklist should prove useful to future crews working at both analog research stations, while also helping Earthly lichenologists better understand the distribution of these fascinating organisms, including new records of rarely reported or newly described species from some of Earth’s most interesting, and otherworldly habitats.
Research article:
Sokoloff PC, Srivastava A, McMullin RT, Clarke J, Knightly P, Stepanova A, Mangeot A, Laroche C-M, Beattie A, Rupert S (2024) An annotated checklist of the lichen biodiversity at two Mars analog sites: The Mars Desert Research Station (Utah, USA) and The Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station (Nunavut, Canada) recorded during the Mars 160 Mission. Check List 20(5): 1096-1126. https://doi.org/10.15560/20.5.1096
The International Congress of Entomology 2024 (ICE2024), which took place on August 25-30 2024 in Kyoto, Japan, was arguably the biggest entomology event of the year. For the Pensoft team, it was an excellent chance to catch up with our authors and editors and discuss new partnerships.
At the Kyoto International Conference Center, entomologists visited lectures, symposia, and poster presentations, but they also enjoyed insect-themed haikus, origami, and artworks, and got to sample some edible insects.
— International Congress of Entomology 2024 Kyoto JP (@ice2024kyoto_jp) August 27, 2024
Meeting our authors in person was a chance for us to gather valuable feedback and make sure we are doing our best to provide entomologists with a frictionless process that makes their published research shine.
Robin Kundrata, author in ZooKeys
Deepa Pureswaran, author and editor in NeoBiota
Alain Roques, author and editor in NeoBiota
Jessica Gillung, author in ZooKeys
Ranjith AP, editor in Check List and author in ZooKeys and Journal of Hymenoptera Research
Scientific illustrator Denitsa Peneva’s beautiful works adorned Pensoft’s stand; Mostafa Ghafouri Moghaddam, subject editor at ZooKeys and Biodiversity Data Journal and author at a number of Pensoft-published journals even got to take one of her prints home after winning a raffle that Pensoft organised. He won a beautiful illustration of Bombus fragrans on Trifolium pratense.
Pensoft’s founder and CEO and one of the founding editors of the company’s flagship journal ZooKeys, Prof. Lyubomir Penev, was there representing the company and meeting with fellow entomologists.
Prof. Penev with Evgeny Zakharov of the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics
Prof. Penev with researchers Jadranka Rota, Niklas Wahlberg, Alexander Konstantinov, and Michael Schmidt
Prof. Penev with researcher Caroline S. Chaboo
They also got the chance to learn about the ARPHA Platform, a next-generation publishing solution that offers a streamlined and efficient workflow for authors, reviewers, and editors.
At ICE2024, Pensoft also presented its newest open-access jorunal, Natural History Collections and Museomics. A peer-reviewed journal for research, discussion and innovation of natural history collections, NHCM will publish under a diamond open access model, allowing free access to published content without any fees for authors or readers.
In addition to its publishing endeavors, Pensoft also presented some of the EU-funded pollinator projects that it takes part in such as Safeguard, PollinERA, and WildPosh.
ICE2024 was a chance to advance entomological science and foster collaboration within the global scientific community. For those who missed the chance to connect with Pensoft in Kyoto, the company’s journals and platforms remain accessible online, offering opportunities to read and produce groundbreaking research in insect diversity and ecology.
Guest blog post by Paul C. Sokoloff, Lynn J. Gillespie, Geoffrey A. Levin
On northern Baffin Island, Nunavut – the northernmost territory of Canada and Inuit homeland since time immemorial – the tips of long fjords weave around towering peaks and harbour shrubby plants, mounds of lichens, and carpets of mosses and other bryophytes, all set in a majestic landscape known and stewarded by Inuit past, present, and future. This is Agguttinni, Nunavut’s newest and largest territorial park. A new study published in Check List and led by Dr. Lynn Gillespie from the Canadian Museum of Nature, documents the 141 vascular plant, 69 bryophyte, and 93 lichen species collected from this unique protected area.
The backdrop to this study is the Canadian Arctic ecozone. This vast region comprises approximately 40% of Canada’s landmass and a broad array of unique habitats, from expansive flat tundra to glacial peaks to rich wetlands. The plants that grow here are well-adapted to their environment. Most grow low, soaking up heat from sun-warmed soil and staying out of cold, drying winds. Many are covered in insulating hairs and can go from bud to flower to fruit quickly during the short Arctic summers. And while woody, spreading shrubs can dominate in the low Arctic, they become rarer further north; conversely bryophyte and lichen species become increasingly important components of the biomass. In this context, the 303 species found in Agguttinni represent a wide swath of Arctic floristic diversity.
In 2021, Dr. Gillespie’s team travelled to Kanngiqtugaapik (Clyde River) to conduct a botanical inventory of Agguttinni Territorial Park, in partnership with Nunavut Parks and Special Places and with the support of Polar Knowledge Canada. Over the course of five weeks, the team, a fearless five including museum botanists and guides from Kanngiqtugaapik, travelled across the park on foot and by helicopter seeking out every habitat and plant and lichen species within the park. The team established four base camps at the heads of fjords, within mountain passes, and in sheltered harbours, where all necessities were slung in by helicopter, including sleeping tents, kitchen shelters, a field lab for processing samples, and even a solar panel to take advantage of the 24-hour sunlight. Through the weeks on the land, the team found an efficient tempo of collecting specimens in the field and pressing back at camp.
While 2021 was a cold, wet year on northern Baffin Island, the challenging conditions were offset with good company, good food, and warming long hikes. The team searched through hummocky tundra, over gravel scree, in river valleys and on esker ridges, documenting the flora of every terrain within Agguttinni, while our guides from Clyde River, Jaypiti Inutiq and Leeno Apak, provided us with valuable insight into their lands and kept us safe in numerous ways. These wanders, and helicopter excursions from Kanngiqtugaapik, allowed us to thoroughly inventory and compare various habitats within the park.
The sheltered valleys and heads of fjords, far inland from the coast of Baffin Bay, were the most floristically diverse in the study area. At these sites, willow shrubs grow tall (well, at up to 1.5 m high, tall for Baffin Island), and a diverse patchwork of geology and topography is home to species found nowhere else in the park, including new northern-most Canadian records of Lapland Diapensia (Diapensia lapponica) and Flame-tipped Lousewort (Pedicularis flammea), as well as species rare on Baffin Island, such as Dwarf Hawksbeard (Askellia pygmaea) and Hartz’s Bluegrass (Poa hartzii).
Conversely, coastal habitats and inland valleys and plateaus proved to be less floristically diverse. Immediately adjacent to the Barnes Ice Cap, the recently-unglaciated zone harboured few vascular plant species and no lichens – a lesson in succession. However, amid this scour, large mounds of blackened moss, likely covered during the Little Ice Age, could be seen regenerating – new green growth amongst bare rock.
Even so, we encountered fascinating new botanical records in these environments, including the first records of Bruggemann’s Alkaligrass (Puccinellia bruggemannii) and Skult’s Shield Lichen (Parmelia skultii) for Baffin Island. On the Barnes Plateau, collections of Powdered Matchstick Lichen (Pilophorus caerulus), Starke’s Fork Moss (Kiaeria starkei) and Sprig Moss (Aongstroemia longipes) are newly reported for Nunavut.
While these new records provide important new knowledge about the Arctic flora, commonly encountered species also provide important context about species important to ecosystem health and functioning, and some species proved to be unusually common in the area. For example, Mountain Woodrush (Luzula confusa), Four Angled-Mountain Heather (Cassiope tetragona), Hairy Rock-Moss (Racomitrium lanuginosum), and Orange Chocolate Chip Lichen (Solorina crocea) were encountered throughout the park. Arctic Mushroom Scales Lichen (Lichenomphalia hudsoniana) was also encountered in many locations throughout the park, despite its relative under-collection elsewhere in Nunavut.
The 1007 collections made by Dr. Gillespie’s team in 2021, deposited at the National Herbarium of Canada (CAN), serve as the biodiversity backbone of this current study. The authors examined an additional 386 existing herbarium specimens at CAN, Agriculture and Agrifoods Canada (DAO), and the Université de Montréal (MT), and from other institutions accessed through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The vast majority of these existing specimens were collected during the Baird Expedition to Baffin Island in 1950. Seventy-four years later, these specimens still provide valuable insight into the biodiversity of Agguttinni.
This powerful combination of old and new specimens, brought together in this paper, more than doubles the number of plant and lichen species known from the park (from 136 to 299), and triples the number of known vascular plants from 45 to 137. It therefore provides a vital biodiversity reference to help in the management and conservation of Agguttinni Territorial Park. More broadly, it expands our understanding of plant diversity in northern Canada, a vast area that includes many under-explored areas. Studies like this also provide important baseline data for assessing future impacts of climate change.
With Thanks
We are grateful to the community of Kanngiqtugaapik for hosting us and this research on their land, Nunavut Parks and Special Places and Polar Knowledge Canada for supporting this work, Jaypiti Inutiq and Leeno Apak for their knowledge and protection on the land, Stéphane Caron and Louis André Grégoire for keeping us up in the air, Patrick Graillon and Linda Vaillancourt from Nunavut Parks for facilitating this work, Martha Raynolds, Helga Bültmann, Yemisi Dare and Julian Starr for excellent recent collections that were included in the study, and herbarium specialists at CAN, DAO, and MT.
Original Study
Gillespie LJ, Sokoloff PC, Levin GA, Doubt J, McMullin RT (2024) Vascular plant, bryophyte, and lichen biodiversity of Agguttinni Territorial Park, Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada: an annotated species checklist of a new Arctic protected area. Check List 20(2): 279-443. https://doi.org/10.15560/20.2.279
Today, Pensoft celebrates one of its most distinguished editors and the world’s leading authority on thrips: Dr. Laurence Mound on the occasion of his 90th birthday.
Born in Willesden, London, on 22 April 1934, Dr. Mound is considered a world authority in the field. Having received his PhD from the University of London, he has been studying the biology and systematics of the order Thysanoptera for more than six decades. His academic recognitions include honorary membership at both the Royal and the Australian Entomological societies.
To date, Dr. Laurence Mound is the most prolific thrips researcher in history and has made monumental contributions to the field as the author of 500 publications, including landmark papers that have since shaped our understanding of the taxonomy and evolution of thrips. He has also published a number of books on thrip identification and control.
Having worked with admirable devotion and persistence to advance the knowledge of thrips on a global scale, Dr. Mound has described over 700 species and 100 genera. His studies have helped with species identifications in important pest groups, which in turn has had a pivotal role in the management of pests and the prevention of the establishment of new pest species.
One of the first-ever entomologists to join the ZooKeys editorial team, Mound has been the journal’s go-to editor for the order Thysanoptera for more than a decade. He oversaw the publication of 18 research papers at ZooKeys. He has also authored 11 articles in the journal, including especially valuable identification keys of different taxa from across the globe. He has also been one of the journal’s active reviewers.
“As a founder of ZooKeys, I’d like to specially congratulate Laurence on his 90th anniversary and personally thank him for his admirable involvement in our beloved journal. I cannot stress it enough how central dedicated and passionate scientists like him are to have a journal establish itself as a top-quality community-led resource of knowledge. As a fellow entomologist, I’d like to wish him health and good fortune for many years to come; and may the devotion and fascination you have invested in the field extend to each and every aspect of your life!”
says Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev, founder/CEO of Pensoft and founding editor of ZooKeys.
“As Editor-in-Chief of ZooKeys, I wish you a ‘Happy 90th birthday!’ and thank you for your dedication and support of the journal since its very early days,”
“It was Laurence Mound who suggested my name to replace him as subject editor for Thysanoptera at ZooKeys five years ago. Since then, Laurence has actively continued to be a major contributor of both papers and reviews to the journal. It is an honour to share his friendship and to be able to continually receive his support, encouragement and guidance over the years. I would like to express my gratitude and wish an excellent birthday to this researcher who inspires all of us who study Thysanoptera and entomology in general,”
“We are truly honoured to have been working with Laurence all these years! His passion and dedication have left a permanent mark on the field of entomology. We toast to the future success and happiness of a dear friend, editor, and author. May his work continue to inspire many more generations of entomologists and conservationists,”
A comprehensive study of the floristic diversity of Agguttinni Territorial Park has documented 141 vascular plant, 69 bryophyte, and 93 lichen species from this unique protected area.
Encompassing over 16 000 km2 of towering mountains, long fiords, lush valleys, and massive ice caps, Agguttinni Territorial Park is a protected area on northern Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. This park, and all of Nunavut, is Inuit Nunangat – Inuit homeland in Canada – and the park protects sites and biodiversity stewarded by Inuit since time immemorial.
Agguttinni means “where the prevailing wind occurs” in the Inuktitut local dialect. The park includes important bird areas, key habitats for polar bears and caribou, and numerous important Inuit cultural sites. It is very remote: no roads lead to it, and access is only by helicopter, boat in the summer, or snowmobile in the winter.
Over five weeks in the summer of 2021, Dr. Gillespie’s team traveled across Agguttinni, exploring the vicinity of four base camps in the park on foot and further afield by helicopter. Across this large area, they studied many different habitats from the interior Barnes Ice Cap to the coast of Baffin Bay.
The heads of the long fiords, sheltered far inland, hosted the greatest plant diversity in the park, including numerous species rare on Baffin Island and two species previously only known from farther south in Canada: Lapland Diapensia (Diapensia lapponica) and Flame-tipped Lousewort (Pedicularis flammea). Conversely, the interior plateau near the ice cap was less diverse, but still held new records for Nunavut, such as Powdered Matchstick Lichen (Pilophorus caerulus), Starke’s Fork Moss (Kiaeria starkei) and Sprig Moss (Aongstroemia longipes).
This intensive fieldwork resulted in over a thousand new specimens deposited at the National Herbarium of Canada at the Canadian Museum of Nature and other herbaria worldwide. These pressed and preserved plants and lichens serve as proof that these species were found at this specific place and time and are the foundation for our knowledge of botanical diversity in the park.
Dr. Gillespie and her team also examined over 300 existing herbarium specimens from the park area, most of which were collected in 1950, the last time botanists intensively studied this part of Baffin Island. Combining data from these old and new specimens has resulted in an annotated checklist of the park’s plant and lichen diversity, describing the 141 vascular plant, 69 bryophyte, and 93 lichen species documented in Agguttinni, all native to the Arctic.
This checklist, immensely valuable to park managers and botanists, is filled with descriptions and photos useful to anyone interested in Arctic botany and is out now in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Check List. With information on which species are present, where they are distributed, and which ones are rare, it will help the conservation and management of the protected area.
Research article:
Gillespie LJ, Sokoloff PC, Levin GA, Doubt J, McMullin RT (2024) Vascular plant, bryophyte, and lichen biodiversity of Agguttinni Territorial Park, Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada: an annotated species checklist of a new Arctic protected area. Check List 20(2): 279-443. https://doi.org/10.15560/20.2.279
A burrowing owl is overwintering on a Tennessee River peninsula near New Johnsonville, Tennessee, marking the first sighting of the species in the state.
STARKVILLE, Miss.—Birds migrating from north to south are a given but migrating from the southwest to the southeast is a little rarer. A burrowing owl is overwintering on a Tennessee River peninsula near New Johnsonville, Tennessee, marking the first sighting of the species in the state, and a Mississippi State wildlife ecologist is researching the fascinating oddity.
As the burrowing owl made its first home on a former Tennessee Valley Authority fossil fuel plant in 2020, Scott Rush, a scientist in the MSU Forest and Wildlife Research Center, was called in by TVA to study the bird of prey found hundreds of miles outside of its range.
“Burrowing owls are found west of Central Texas and Oklahoma, all the way up into Canada. There is also a non-migratory population in Florida, so you’ll occasionally see them in Alabama but never in Tennessee,” Rush said, explaining a continuing struggle for the birds is a loss of habitat.
Burrowing Owl, Athene cunicularia, observed overwintering in New Johnsonville, Tennessee, USA. Photograph taken on 19 November 2022 by T. Ross.
“They live inside burrows created by prairie dogs and other animals,” he said. “They’re declining across the range in part because we’re losing some of those historic systems like undisturbed prairie dog colonies as more grasslands are being developed.”
Rush, an associate professor in MSU’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture, and his research team have studied the bird and its diet to learn more about where the novel creature came from and why he makes his winter home in the Volunteer State.
Burrowing owl on the former TVA fossil fuel plant near New Johnsonville, Tennessee. Photo via MSU
The team collected plumage from the owl’s feathers and determined it was a male belonging to the subspecies A.c. hypugaea. They studied pellets to determine its diet, identifying six different species including insect, mammalian and plant remnants. They also conducted an isotopic analysis of its feathers to determine the bird’s home range. Details from the sightings were recently published in Check List, a journal of biodiversity data.
“We could see from various kinds of elemental components that the bird is probably from Texas, relatively near Dallas, according to our analysis,” said Rush, who noted the bird has been banded and this year, scientists hope to outfit it with a GPS tracker. “If we can put a GPS tracker on the owl, we can confirm its home range.”
The owl, which again has overwintered this season in the same location, was first spotted by a TVA employee, and Liz Hamrick, a terrestrial zoologist with TVA reached out to Rush.
“A security guard at the site who happened to be an amateur birder came across it. Once I was alerted of its presence, I connected with our natural resources team who had already been working with Dr. Rush studying ospreys and vultures,” Hamrick said. “My role is to review TVA’s actions and ensure potential impacts to common wildlife and rare animals are avoided or minimized, and that includes protecting this owl. We need to make sure we follow all the state and federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the Executive Order for Migratory Birds.”
Hamrick said that as species assemblages change geographies, her team must be vigilant in identifying new species moving to the area like the burrowing owl and doing their best to protect them on TVA sites.
“It’s been exciting to learn about a whole new species and try to solve a mystery of why on earth this bird is repeatedly selecting to come to this industrial site out of its normal range,” she said.
Research article:
Rush SA, Naveda-Rodríguez A, Hamrick EB (2023) New overwintering location of Burrowing Owl, Athene cunicularia hypugaea (Molina, 1782) (Strigidae) in Tennessee, USA, with diet assessed through pellets. Check List 19(6): 863-868. https://doi.org/10.15560/19.6.863
This news piece was originally published by Mississippi State University. It is republished here with permission.
The city of Cambridge and the Wellcome Campus hosted the Final General Assembly of the EU-funded project BiCIKL (acronym for Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library): a 36-month endeavour that saw 14 member institutions and 15 research infrastructures representing diverse actors from the biodiversity data realm come together to improve bi-directional links between different platforms, standards, formats and scientific fields. Consortium members who could not attend the meeting in Cambridge joined the meeting remotely.
After a welcome cocktail reception on Monday evening at Hilton Cambridge City Centre, on Tuesday, the consortium made an early start with a recap of BiCIKL’s key milestones and outputs from the last three years. All Work Package leaders had their own timeslot to discuss the results of their collaborations.
They all agreed that the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub – the one-stop portal for understanding the complex – yet increasingly interconnected landscape of biodiversity research infrastructures – is likely the flagship outcome of BiCIKL.
Prof. Lyubomir Penev, project coordinator of BiCIKL and founder/CEO of Pensoft Publishers at the BiCIKL’s third and final General Assembly in Cambridge, United Kingdom.
In the afternoon, the participants focused on the services developed under BiCIKL. Amongst the many services resulting from the project some were not originally planned. Rather those were the ‘natural’ products of the dialogue and collaboration that flourished within the consortium throughout the project. “A symptom of passion,” said Prof. Lyubomir Penev, project coordinator of BiCIKL and founder/CEO of Pensoft Publishers.
An excellent example of one such service is what the partners call the “Biodiversity PMC”, which brings together biodiversity literature from thousands of scholarly journals and over 500,000 taxonomic treatments, in addition to the biomedical content available from NIH’s PubMed Central, into the SIB Literature Services (SIBiLS) database. What’s more, users at SIBiLS – be it human or AI – can now use advanced text- and data-mining tools, including AI-powered factoid question-answering capacities, to query all this full-text indexed content and seek out, for example, species traits and biotic interactions. Read more about the “Biodiversity PMC” in its recent official announcement.
Far from being the only one, the “Biodiversity PMC” is in good company: from the blockchain-based technology of LifeBlock to the curation of the DNA sequences by PlutoF, the BiCIKL project consortium takes pride in having developed twelve services dedicated to FAIR and linked ready-to-use biodiversity data.
On Wednesday, the consortium focused on BiCIKL’s activities from the Transnational and Virtual Access Pillar, which included both presentations by each open call leader and VA leader, as well as open discussions and a recap of what the teams have learnt from these experiences.
A panel discussion took place on Thursday as part of an open event, where BiCIKL partners and ELIXIR Biodiversity and Plant Communities came together to discuss the Future of Biodiversity and Genomics data integration at the EMBL Wellcome Genome Campus.
Thursday was dedicated to an open event where BiCIKL partners and ELIXIR Biodiversity and Plant Communities came together to discuss the Future of Biodiversity and Genomics data integration at the EMBL Wellcome Genome Campus. You can find the agenda on BiCIKL’s website.
After 36 months of action, the BiCIKL project will officially end in April 2024, but does it mean that all will be done and dusted come May 2024? Certainly not, point out the partners.
To ensure that the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub will not only continue to exist but will not cease to grow in both use and participation, the one-stop portal will remain under the maintenance of LifeWatch ERIC.
In conclusion, we could say that an appropriate payoff for the project is “Stick together!” as put by BiCIKL’s Joint Research Activity Leader Dr. Quentin Groom.
Final words at the third and last General Assembly of the BiCIKL project.
You can find highlights from the BiCIKL General Assembly meeting on X via the #BiCIKL_H2020 hashtag (in association with #Cambridge and #finalGA)
All research outputs, including the approved grant proposal, policy briefs, guidelines papers and research articles associated with the project, remain openly accessible from the BiCIKL project outcomes collection in RIO Journal: https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.coll.105.
October and November 2023 were active months for the Pensoft team, who represented the publisher’s journals and projects at conferences in Europe, North America, South America, Oceania and Asia.
Let’s take a look back at all the events of the past two months.
The Biodiversity Information Standards Conference 2023
The annual gathering is a crucial platform for sharing insights, innovations, and knowledge related to biodiversity data standards and practices. Key figures from Pensoft took part in the event, presenting new ways to improve the management, accessibility, and usability of biodiversity data.
Prof. Lyubomir Penev, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Pensoft, gave two talks that highlighted the importance of data publishing. His presentation on “The Biodiversity Knowledge Hub (BKH): A Crosspoint and Knowledge Broker for FAIR and Linked Biodiversity Data” underscored the significance of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data standards. BKH is the major output from the Horizon 2020 project BiCIKL (Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library) dedicated to linked and FAIR data in biodiversity, and coordinated by Pensoft.
Prof. Lyubomir Penev, Pensoft founder and CEO.
He also introduced the Nanopublications for Biodiversity workflow and format: a promising new tool developed by Knowledge Pixels and Pensoft to communicate key scientific statements in a way that is human-readable, machine-actionable, and in line with FAIR principles. Earlier this year, Biodiversity Data Journal integrated nanopublications into its workflow to allow authors to share their findings even more efficiently.
Chief Technology Officer of Pensoft Teodor Georgiev contributed to the conference by presenting “OpenBiodiv for Users: Applications and Approaches to Explore a Biodiversity Knowledge Graph.” His session highlighted the innovative approaches being taken to explore and leverage a biodiversity knowledge graph, showcasing the importance of technology in advancing biodiversity research.
Metabarcoding and Metagenomics editor-in-chief, Florian Leese.
The theme of the conference was “Monitoring Biodiversity for Action” and there was particular emphasis on the development of best practices and new technologies for biodiversity observations and monitoring to support transformative policy and conservation action.
Metabarcoding & Metagenomics’ editor-in-chief, Florian Leese, was one of the organisers of the “Standardized eDNA-Based Biodiversity Monitoring to Inform Environmental Stewardship Programs” session. Furthermore, the journal was represented at Pensoft’s exhibition booth, where conference participants were able to discuss metabarcoding and metagenomics research.
#geobonconf2023 was great as it linked different actors performing #biodiversity monitoring. Today we discussed #eDNA standardisation. We need formal standards, QA/QC, guidance, 🌐harmonisation to facilitate uptake. Cool to see our @DNAquaNet practical guide in this context. pic.twitter.com/eTOtr3yug8
Following the conference, Metabarcoding & Metagenomics announced a new special issue titled “Towards Standardized Molecular Biodiversity Monitoring.” The special issue is accepting submissions until 15th March 2024.
Asian Mycological Congress2023
The Asian Mycological Congress welcomed researchers from around the world to Busan, Republic of Korea, for an exploration of all things fungi from 10-13 October.
MycoKeys Best Talk award (winner not pictured).
Titled “Fungal World and Its Bioexploitation – in all areas of basic and applied mycology,” the conference covered a range of topics related to all theoretical and practical aspects of mycology. There was a particular emphasis on the development of mycology through various activities associated with mycological education, training, research, and service in countries and regions within Asia.
As one of the sponsors of the congress, Pensoft proudly presented a Best Talk award to Dr Sinang Hongsanan of Chiang Mai University, Thailand. The award entitles the winner to a free publication in Pensoft’s flagship mycology journal, MycoKeys.
Joint ESENIAS and DIAS Scientific Conference 2023
The ESENIAS and DIAS conference took place from 11-14 October and focused on “globalisation and invasive alien species in the Black Sea and Mediterranean regions.” Pensoft shared information on their NeoBiota journal and the important REST-COAST and B-Cubed projects.
Polina Nikova receiving the NeoBiota Best Talk Award.
Polina Nikova of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences received the NeoBiota Best Talk Award for her presentation titled “First documented records in the wild of American mink (Neogale vision von Schreber, 1776) in Bulgaria.” The award entitles her to a free publication in the NeoBiota journal.
XII European Congress of Entomology
Pensoft took part in the XII European Congress of Entomology (ECE 2023) in Heraklion, Crete, from 16-20 October. The event provided a forum for entomologists from all over the world, bringing together over 900 scientists from 60 countries.
Carla Stoyanova, Teodor Metodiev and Boriana Ovcharova representing Pensoft.
The ECE 2023, organised by the Hellenic Entomological Society, addressed the pressing challenges facing entomology, including climate change, vector-borne diseases, biodiversity loss, and the need to sustainably feed a growing world population. The program featured symposia, lectures, poster sessions, and other types of activities aimed at fostering innovation in entomology. For Pensoft, they were a great opportunity to interact with scientists and share their commitment to advancing entomological research and addressing the critical challenges in the field.
🐝Today at #ECE2023, Prof Denis Michez & Sara Reverté are running a workshop on bee identification!
Throughout the event, conference participants could find Pensoft’s team at thir booth, and learn more about the scholarly publisher’s open-access journals in entomology. In addition, the Pensoft team presented the latest outcomes from the Horizon 2020 projects B-GOOD, Safeguard, and PoshBee, where the publisher takes care of science communication and dissemination as a partner.
Group photo of XIV International Congress of Orthopterology 2023 participants.
Hosted for the first time in Mexico, it attracted experts and enthusiasts from around the world. The congress featured plenary speakers who presented cutting-edge research and insights on various aspects of grasshoppers, crickets, and related insects.
Pensoft’s Journal of Orthoptera Research was represented by Tony Robillard, the editor-in-chief, who presented the latest developments of the journal to attendees.
Symposia, workshops, and meetings facilitated discussions on topics like climate change impacts, conservation, and management of Orthoptera. The event also included introductions to new digital and geospatial tools for Orthoptera research.
The 16th International Conference on Ecology and Management of Alien Plant Invasions
4th International ESP Latin America and Caribbean Conference
The 4th International ESP Latin America and Caribbean Conference (ESP LAC 2023) was held in La Serena, Chile, from 6-10 November. Focused on “Sharing knowledge about ecosystem services and natural capital to build a sustainable future,” the event attracted experts in ecosystem services, particularly from Latin America and the Caribbean.
🤩 So excited to be part of the 4th International ESP Latin America and Caribbean Conference, which opens later today! In a great tradition with the ESP conferences, we are offering three full APC waivers for the three best posters.@ESPartnershiphttps://t.co/O97nwEGnMj
Organised by the Ecosystem Services Partnership, this bi-annual conference was open to both ESP members and non-members, featuring a hybrid format in English and Spanish. Attendees enjoyed an excursion to La Serena’s historical center, adding a cultural dimension to the event.
The conference included diverse sessions and a special recognition by Pensoft’s One Ecosystem journal, which awarded full waivers for publication to the authors of the three best posters.
Magaly Aldave receiving the Best Poster Award.
Magaly Aldave of the Transdisciplinary Center for FES-Systemic Studies claimed first prize with “The voice of children in the conservation of the urban wetland and Ramsar Site Pantanos de Villa in Metropolitan Lima, Peru.” Ana Catalina Copier Guerrero and Gabriela Mallea-Rebolledo, both of the University of Chile, were awarded second and third prize respectively.
The event featured in-person and online participation, catering to a wide audience of researchers, academics, and students. It included workshops, presentations, and discussions, with a focus on enhancing understanding in biosystematics.
Pensoft awarded three student prizes at the event. Putter Tiatragu, Australian National University, received the Best Student Talk award and a free publication in any Pensoft journal for “A big burst of blindsnakes: Phylogenomics and historical biogeography of Australia’s most species-rich snake genus.”
Helen Armstrong, Murdoch University, received the Best Student Lightning Talk for “An enigmatic snapper parasite (Trematoda: Cryptogonimidae) found in an unexpected host.” Patricia Chan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, was the Best Student Lightning Talk runner-up for “Drivers of Diversity of Darwinia’s Common Scents and Inflorescences with Style: Phylogenomics, Pollination Biology, and Floral Chemical Ecology of Western Australian Darwinia (Myrtaceae).”
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As we approach the end of 2023, Pensoft looks back on its most prolific and meaningful year of conferences and events. Thank you to everyone who contributed to or engaged with Pensoft’s open-access journals, and here’s to another year of attending events, rewarding important research, and connecting with the scientific community.
Content from 20 Pensoft journals will now be automatically added to ResearchGate to reach the research network’s 25 million users. Each journal will also receive a dedicated profile.
ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and Pensoft today announced a new partnership that will see a set of Pensoft’s open access journals increase their reach and visibility through ResearchGate – increasing access and engagement with its 25 million researcher members.
As part of this new partnership, 20 journals published by Pensoft – including the publisher’s flagship titles ZooKeys, PhytoKeys, MycoKeys, Biodiversity Data Journal and Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO Journal) amongst others – will now have their content automatically added to ResearchGate upon publication to benefit from enhanced visibility and discoverability through ResearchGate’s innovative Journal Home offering. These journals will all have dedicated profiles and be prominently represented on all associated article pages on ResearchGate, as well as all other relevant touch points throughout the network.
Journal Home provides a unique opportunity for Pensoft to connect its authors with their readers. The new journal profiles on ResearchGate will provide a central location for each journal, enabling researchers to learn more, discover new article content, and understand how, through their network, they are connected to the journal’s community of authors and editors. Authors of these journals additionally benefit from having their articles automatically added to their ResearchGate profile page, giving them access to metrics, including who is reading and citing their research. These rich insights will also enable Pensoft to build a deeper understanding of the communities engaging with its journals.
“Pensoft is delighted to be working with ResearchGate to provide an even greater service to our authors and readers. ResearchGate offers an innovative way for us to grow the reach and visibility of our content, while also giving us a way to better understand and engage our author and reader audiences.”
said Prof Lyubomir Penev, CEO and founder of Pensoft.
“We couldn’t be happier to see Pensoft embark on this new partnership with ResearchGate. Journal Home will not only enable Pensoft authors to build visibility for their work, but provide them and Pensoft with greater insights about the communities engaging with that research. I look forward to seeing this new collaboration develop”
said Sören Hofmayer, co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer at ResearchGate.
About ResearchGate:
ResearchGate is the professional network for researchers. Over 25 million researchers use researchgate.net to share and discover research, build their networks, and advance their careers. Based in Berlin, ResearchGate was founded in 2008. Its mission is to connect the world of science and make research open to all.
For the Pensoft team, September 2023 was a busy and exciting month filled with conferences. Travelling across Europe, they promoted journals, connected with the scientific community, and rewarded exceptional research with free article publications.
Let’s take a look back at all the events of the past month.
Pensoft representatives Mrs. Boriana Ovcharova and Mrs. Anna Sapundzhieva, ready to greet attendees in the sun.
The conference looked at evolutionary adaptations from the perspective of behavioural ecology, reproduction biology, genetics, physiology, as well as nature conservation. It particularly focused on the pressing issues of wildlife research and species conservation in the context of global environmental change. Most of the ≈100 participants were young scientists from more than 30 countries.
The Pensoft team greeted fellow attendees with an exhibition stand and presented the conservation and ecology-focused journals Neobiota, Nature Conservation, One Ecosystem, and Biodiversity Data Journal. Pensoft also advocated for EuropaBon, who are designing an EU-wide framework for monitoring biodiversity and ecosystem services, and REST-COAST, whose mission is to provide the tools to restore environmental degradation of rivers and coasts. Within both European-funded initiatives, Pensoft is a key dissemination partner that contributes expertise in science communication, scholarly publishing, and the development of digital tools and platforms.
Joao Pedro Meireles posing with his Best Poster award.
Pensoft presented Joao Pedro Meireles from Utrecht University with the Best Poster Award for his research on pair compatibility in okapis, entitling him to a free publication in one of Pensoft’s open-access journals.
“My study looked at pair compatibility in the zoo breeding programme of Okapi. During breeding introductions, sometimes the male becomes aggressive towards the female and we decided to investigate the potential factors. We ran a survey among all zoos that house the species in Europe and we found that differences in husbandry were linked to the aggressiveness performed by the males.”
Joao Pedro Meireles, Utrecht University
GfÖ Annual Meeting 2023
From the 12th to 16th of September, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research hosted the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerlandin Leipzig, Germany. The meeting welcomed more than 1,100 participants from around the world, including scientists, policymakers, educators, and environmental enthusiasts.
This year’s meeting was held with the theme: “The future of biodiversity – overcoming barriers of taxa, realms and scales.” There was a particular emphasis on future challenges and opportunities facing biodiversity, and how to address and manage these in an interdisciplinary and integrative way.
Mrs. Boriana Ovcharova (Pensoft) with Neobiota Editor-in-Chief Prof. Dr. Ingolf Kühn.
Conference participants were welcomed at the Pensoft stand, where they could learn more about the projects EuropaBon and SELINA, which deal with biodiversity, ecosystem and natural capital topics.
Also in Leipzig, the European Conference on Ecological Modellingtook place between the 4th and 8th of September. The event focused on the transformation of how societies deal with natural resources in a world where biodiversity and ecosystem services are at high risk.
The ECEM 2023 continued a series of conferences launched by the European chapter of ISEM, the International Society for Ecological Modelling. ISEM promotes the international exchange of ideas, scientific results, and general knowledge in the areas of systems’ analysis and simulations in ecology, and the application of ecological modelling for natural resource management.
📢Shutout to all attending the #ECEM23@ECEM_2023#ecological#modelling conference TODAY in Leipzig! Make sure to visit the poster session during lunch & find about the unique article types welcome to our #journal! 💡They intend to disseminate models PRIOR TO implementation! https://t.co/dUVskYFK11
— Food & Ecological Systems Modelling Journal, FESMJ (@FESMJournal) September 5, 2023
The Bundesinstitut für Risikobewertung team presented a poster on the Formal Model format and potential new MiDox formats, unique publication types that can be submitted to Pensoft’s Food and Ecological Modelling Journal.
118th Congress of the Italian Botanical Society
Speakers at the 118th Congress of the Italian Botanical Society.
Pensoft was proud to sponsor the 118th Congress of the Italian Botanical Society, which took place in Pisa, Italy from the 13th to 16th of September. Experts in various fields of Botany gathered to share their research on the following topics:
Journals promoted by Pensoft at the 94th Annual Meeting of the Paläontologische Gesellschaft.
Summer may be well and truly over, but as a new academic year begins, Pensoft looks forward to attending more conferences, rewarding more incredible research, and connecting with more of the scientific community. Thank you to everyone who contributed to or engaged with Pensoft’s open-access journals this year, and here’s to a successful final quarter of 2023.
