Research led by INPA scientists reveals that the parasite, famous for altering ant behavior, also shelters within vegetation, suggesting a dual ecological journey never before observed in manipulating lineages of the genus.
A team led by researchers at the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA), in Manaus, has found evidence that the “zombie-ant” fungus (genus Ophiocordyceps), globally known for controlling ant behavior and forcing infected ants to bite onto plants before dying, also lives hidden inside mosses in the Amazon rainforest.
By analysing the DNA of mosses collected at the Ducke Reserve in Manaus, the scientists detected the same parasitic fungus present not only in infected and manipulated insects, but also in the mosses where the infected insect is manipulated to bite. This indicates that the fungus has one life stage as an insect parasite and another, endophytic (living inside the plant) stage that had gone unnoticed until now.
Camponotus nidulans ants infected by O. camponoti-nidulantis found among bryophytes at the Adolpho Ducke Forest Reserve. Specimen “TAJ59” found on Octoblepharum moss. Image credit: Tales Alves-Júnior et al.
Specimen “TAJ63” also found on Octoblepharum moss. Image credit: Tales Alves-Júnior et al.
The genus Ophiocordyceps comprises more than 350 species of fungi known for infecting a wide range of insects. Some of these species are famous for a behaviour that sounds like science fiction: after infecting an ant, the fungus alters its behaviour and forces it to leave the colony, climb the vegetation, and clamp its mandibles onto a specific spot, the so-called “death grip,” shortly before dying and releasing its spores.
In 2020, studies in China had already shown that a species from the same genus, known as “Himalayan gold” (O. sinensis), lived endophytically in plants in alpine regions. The major breakthrough of this new INPA study is demonstrating this same dual lifestyle in fungi that manipulate the insect to specifically and consistently bite plants that harbor the endophytic stage of the “zombie fungus.”
This suggests that the behavioral manipulation goes beyond the fungus-ant association, and that the plant harbouring the fungus’ endophytic phase may also possibly influence the manipulation itself.
The research, published in the open-access journal IMA Fungus, was carried out at the Adolpho Ducke Forest Reserve, north of Manaus, and relied on metabarcoding, a technique that allows researchers to read the DNA of all fungi present in an environmental sample at once.
Ophiocordyceps-infected insects found attached to bryophytes. Camponotusrenggeri ant infected by O.camponoti-renggeri (TAJ32) biting into a Plagiochila liverwort while gripping an Octoblepharum moss with its tarsal claws. Image credit: Tales Alves-Júnior et al.
The results revealed that the fungus was present not only in infected ants but also consistently in the surrounding mosses, including in plants located more than 10 metres away from any ant infected by the parasite.
In the Amazon, researchers had already noticed that some manipulated ant species predominantly seek out mosses to bite for the “death grip,” but little was known about a possible prior colonisation of the moss by the same insect-parasitising fungus.
DNA analyses showed that even highly host-specialised fungal lineages, such as O. camponoti-nidulantis (infecting Camponotus nidulans) and O. kniphofioides (infecting Cephalotes atratus), were sheltered within bryophytes in the surrounding vegetation.
Ophiocordyceps kniphofioides in a turtle ant (Cephalotes sp.), found attached to an Octoblepharum moss. Image credit: Tales Alves-Júnior.
The discovery reshapes our understanding of the life cycle of these fungi and how these organisms evolve and survive. The ability to associate with plants may help the fungus persist through periods when insect hosts are scarce, and could also help explain the intriguing fidelity of certain fungal lineages to specific moss types.
“We have always thought of this fungus (Ophiocordyceps) as a parasite exclusive to insects, especially the ones it manipulates. What our data suggest is that the story is much larger: the same fungus appears to be ubiquitous in the surrounding moss communities. Our results illustrate a far closer link between the lifecycles of the plants and fungi involved in the behavioral manipulation of Amazonian ants.”
Tales Alves Jr., biologist, Master’s in Botany from INPA and lead author of the study.
“The well-known behavioral manipulation caused by Ophiocordyceps may not result solely from the interaction between fungus and ant, but from a complex relationship among the fungus, its host, and the plant where the same fungus lives silently as an endophyte.”
Alves-Júnior T, Araújo JPM, Góes-Neto A, Mendes-Pereira T, Zartman CE (2026) Metabarcoding reveals a hidden endophytic stage of the ‘zombie-ant’ fungus in Amazonian mosses. IMA Fungus 17: e196998. https://doi.org/10.3897/imafungus.17.196998
The floodlights have dimmed, the confetti has settled, and the 2026 FIFA World Cup has officially come to an end. A huge congratulations to Spain, who saw off Argentina 1-0 after extra time to lift their second World Cup trophy.
And with the football finished, it’s time for us to blow the final whistle on our own tournament too. Throughout the World Cup, we ran the Pensoft Biodiversity Cup alongside the real competition – a weekly knockout contest on our Instagram page, pitting some of the most remarkable species described in our journals against one another.
Every Thursday we opened the polls, and every Monday we brought you the result. Now that the dust has settled, we thought it was the perfect moment to look back at how the tournament unfolded.
Here’s how each fixture played out, with the winning species (as voted for by you!) shown in blue bold:
Date
Species #1
Species #2
11/06
Nadzikambia goodallae
Ferreiraella populi
18/06
Hellwigia opalina
Neohelicomyces coffeae
25/06
Thecacera sesama
Dolichopoda balrogi
02/07
Pikelinia floydmuraria
Trachischium lalremsangai
09/07
Theridion himalayana
Pyralis papaleonei
19/07
Iberoscia zaragozai
Echinodorus nenufar
General recap of Pensoft’s Biodiversity Cup.
Our first week’s competition kicked off with a cloud-forest chameleon named after Jane Goodall, which faced off against a public-named deep-sea chiton from the abyssal Pacific:
…and round two went to the fungi! Neohelicomyces coffeae ended up decisively defeating the jade ginger Hellwigia opalina in this Plant vs Fungi edition.
Round three brought Cave vs. Coast: a Balrog-named cave cricket unearthed on Kastellorizo faced a sesame-speckled nudibranch discovered off northeastern Taiwan:
Our third round went to the underdog (or in this case, undercricket): Dolichopoda balrogi, which hopped past Thecacera sesama in a unanimous win.
Round four was our Animal Kingdom edition, with the newly described Pink Floyd spider Pikelinia floydmuraria facing off against the burrowing snake Trachischium lalremsangai for the top spot:
Pikelinia floydmuraria vs Trachischium lalremsangai.
The snake slithered through – Trachischium lalremsangai defeated Pikelinia floydmuraria, its burrowing lifestyle proving harder to top than a rock-star spider name in this round.
Our second-to-last round paired the smiley-faced Himalayan Happy-Face Spider, Theridion himalayana, against Pyralis papaleonei, a papal-named moth endemic to Crete’s White Mountains:
The moth flew past the competition! Pyralis papaleonei took the win over Theridion himalayana, its rare papal namesake and striking wing bands proving enough to edge out even a face full of smiles.
Our own final on 19 July ended up mirroring the World Cup final to a tee, with a species from Spain going head-to-head with one from Argentina:
Representing Spain in the final was Iberoscia zaragozai, a newly described genus and species of cave-dwelling isopod, published only this April in our open-access journal Subterranean Biology.
Discovered in caves across Catalonia, Murcia and the Valencian Community, this blind crustacean measures barely 3-4 mm long, yet required a new genus to accommodate it, thanks to its unique features – right down to its antennal sensory structures.
Fittingly, it’s named in posthumous tribute to the Spanish arachnologist Juan Antonio Zaragoza-Miralles, in recognition of his decades of work on the cave-dwelling fauna of the Iberian Peninsula.
Standing in Argentina’s corner was Echinodorus nenufar, a new aquatic plant described in PhytoKeysback in January. Found in the temporary ponds and seasonal wetlands of the dry Chaco region of northern Argentina and western Paraguay, it earns its name – “nenúfar” being Spanish for water lily – thanks to its rounded floating leaves and creamy-white flowers, which give it an uncanny resemblance to a true Nymphaeaceae water lily.
Like the seasonal killifish it shares its ephemeral ponds with, it has evolved to complete its whole life cycle in habitats that can appear and vanish with the rains.
Two species, two countries, both barely a few months old to science. This is a proper final if ever there was one. And… just like their footballing counterparts, it was the Spanish contender that came out on top!
We had an absolute blast running the Biodiversity Cup alongside this year’s World Cup, and we hope it gave you a fun new way to discover some of the incredible species being described in our journals. Thank you to everyone who voted, shared and cheered along from the side lines.
Deep within the humid leaf litter of China and the dense canopies of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, a silent ambush unfolds.
While we often think of spiders as the ultimate predators of the undergrowth, they have an arch-nemesis: araneopathogenic fungi. These “zombie” fungi are capable of parasitising spiders by hijacking their bodies and consuming them from the inside out.
Two studies published in the open-access peer-reviewed scientific journals MycoKeys and IMA Fungus, respectively,offer insight into this macabre world of spider assassins.
In Southeast Asia, researchers led by Chen-xin Chang of the Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine have identified three new species of Gibellula fungi in China and Laos, which erupt from spiders in branch-like structures: Gibellula pseudopigmentosa, Gibellula pseudosolita, and Gibellula sinensis. These species are distinguished from one another by their slight variations in sexual reproductive structures and morphology. The below figure displays morphological plates, showing the three fungi species at both a macroscopic and microscopic level – notice their unique conidial heads and spore arrangements, coloured in blue.
Morphologies of Gibellula pseudopigmentosa, Gibellula pseudopigmentosa, Gibellula pseudosolita, and Gibellula sinensis. Photo credit: Chang et al.
To identify new species of spider-pathogenic fungi, the research group conducted field surveys in the forest leaf of China and Laos, where they collected specimens for detailed laboratory study. A combination of traditional microscopy and modern DNA sequencing rendered the discovery possible. The fungi’s sighting in Laos is particularly significant because it provides the first formal record of the Gibellula genus in the region.
This study – published in MycoKeys– therefore serves to fill a major distributional gap in Southeast Asia, as well as expand our understanding of the morphological diversity within this group of spider-pathogenic fungi.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, a study led by Joao Paulo Machado De Araújo of the University of Copenhagen and the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew, published in IMA Fungus, described a new species of Purpureocillium fungus belonging to the Purpureocilliumatypicola group: Purpureocillium atlanticum. This fungus specifically targets trapdoor spiders inhabiting burrows on the forest floor, where it mummifies the host in white mycelia and subsequently emerges from its cephalothorax in the form of a purple fruiting body.
The discovery was notably featured in The Guardian, where it was placed alongside other unusual botanical and fungal discoveries compiled by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Phylogeny of hypocrealean fungi (A), highlighting the Purpureocillium atypicola complex (B) and morphology of the new species, P. atlanticum (C–G). Photo credit: Araújo et al.
Purpureocillium atypicola was originally recorded in Japan by Yasuda (1894), and was thought to be a single species found all over the world for over a century. The discovery of the Purpureocillium atlanticum in Brazil is significant because it finally confirms that Purpureocillium atypicola is actually a global complex of many unique species.
To identify this new fungus, De Araújo’s research group used taxogenomics, a method which entailed bringing portable DNA sequencing gear directly into the Brazilian rainforest. By analysing the genetic code of the fungus and its environment immediately in the field, they were able to identify the specimen within justfour days as opposed to waiting months for traditional lab results.
Both of these studies highlight the impressive diversity of spider-pathogenic fungi across distinct global environments. They additionally reveal the different evolutionary strategies of their respective species – while Purpureocillium atlanticum has adapted to infect underground trapdoor spiders by producing purple stalks to escape burrows, the Gibellula species represent the most diverse genus of spider parasites, found primarily in forest debris.
As researchers continue to map these complex ecological networks, it becomes clear that preserving threatened biomes, including the Atlantic Forest and the jungles of Southeast Asia, is critical to expanding our knowledge in fungal taxonomy.
Araújo JPM, Przelomska NAS, Smith RJ, Drechsler-Santos ER, Alves-Silva G, Martins-Cunha K, Hosoya T, Luangsa-ard JJ, Perrigo A, Repullés M, Matos-Maraví P, Woods R, Pérez-Escobar OA, Antonelli A (2025) A new species of Purpureocillium (Ophiocordycipitaceae) fungus parasitizing trapdoor spiders in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and its associated microbiome revealed through in situ “taxogenomics”. IMA Fungus 16: e168534. https://doi.org/10.3897/imafungus.16.168534
Chang C-xin, Chen H, Loinheuang C, Dai Y-dong, Wang Y (2026) Morphological and phylogenetic analyses reveal three new species of Gibellula (Cordycipitaceae, Hypocreales) from spiders. MycoKeys 127: 135-154. https://doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.127.177871
To stay up-to-date with new studies made openly available from the MycoKeys and IMA Fungus journal, subscribe to their journal newsletters via Email Alert on their journal websites, and don’t forget to follow them on social media!
Yunnan Province in southwestern China is a global biodiversity hotspot, accommodating an incredible variety of plants and animals. It is also the heart of China’s coffee industry, with Yunnan accounting for almost all of the country’s coffee production. However, coffee plants are very common hosts for many types of fungi, which can act as harmful diseases, harmless residents, or natural recyclers – these factors can impact the plant’s health and how much coffee it produces.
A new study published in the open-access journal MycoKeys, and led by Mei-Yan Han of Chiang Mai University, revealed two novel species of Neohelicomyces fungi: Neohelicomyces coffeae and Neohelicomyces puerensis. While studying the fungi that live on Coffea arabica, the team spotted these unique organisms growing on dead coffee branches. This discovery underscores the need for further investigations into the fungal diversity of the region.
Both species are characterised by their coil-shaped structures which appear as glistening white patches on coffee plants. Specifically, N. coffeae features short stems and small, multi-sectioned spores, while N. puerensis is distinguished by its tightly coiled filaments and unbranched stems. While the former is named after the host genus Coffea, the latter references the locality in which both species were found: Pu’er City.
Neohelicomyces coffeae (GMB-W1490, holotype). Photo credit: Mei-Yan Han et al.
Neohelicomyces puerensis (GMB-W1485, holotype). Photo credit: Mei-Yan Han et al.
Importantly, these fungi are classified as saprophytic because they were found growing exclusively on the dead branches of coffee plants rather than on living tissue. Functioning as nature’s essential recyclers, they obtain their energy by breaking down complex organic materials like wood and cellulose. Therefore, by decomposing this dead matter, both play a vital role in the coffee ecosystem by unlocking trapped nutrients and returning them to the soil. This incentive subsequently helps support the growth of the surrounding living coffee plants.
Saprophytic fungi are additionally being studied as potential sources for new medicines and agricultural tools. Scientists have found that the family to which these new species belong, Tubeufiaceae, can produce natural chemicals that fight off bacteria, other fungi, and even certain types of cancer. Specifically, researchers have already discovered compounds related to Neohelicomyces species that show promise in slowing the growth of human cancer cells.
As of 2026, there are 36 known species of Neohelicomyces, with the vast majority found in China – particularly in Guizhou and Yunnan provinces – though they also appear in Europe and North America. By expanding their known diversity specifically in agricultural environments, researchers have shed light on their ecological potentials, and have called attention to their future biotechnological applications.
Following these discoveries, it is certain that the future of fungal research is starting to brew.
Original source:
Han M-Y, Yang J-Y, Karunarathna SC, Kumla J, Lu L, Zheng D-G, Elgorban AM, Alfagham AT, Yu F-Q, Dai D-Q, Zhang L-J, Suwannarach N, Tibpromma S (2026) Two new Neohelicomyces species (Tubeufiaceae, Tubeufiales) associated with Coffea arabica L. in Yunnan Province, China. MycoKeys 127: 343-362. https://doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.127.173937
Fungi are the hidden architects of our ecosystems, acting as everything from helpful partners for plants to aggressive decomposers that recycle dead wood. However, many fungi don’t stick to just one job; they can switch lifestyles depending on their environment.
Understanding this flexibility is vital for predicting how forests and farms will react to climate change. Unfortunately, the information researchers need is buried in decades of scientific papers that would take too long to comb through manually.
A new study led by Northern Arizona University doctoral student Beatrice M. Bock and published in the open-access journal Research Ideas and Outcomes demonstrates how AI can solve this problem. By using a specialized language model called BioBERT, Bock developed an automated workflow that assesses scientific abstracts and accurately identifies whether a fungus has a single lifestyle or a dual, flexible one.
A high-accuracy hack
Bock said that for years, mycologists have relied on manual databases to track what different fungi do in the environment. While these tools are essential, they are difficult to keep updated as new research is published every day.
“Manually identifying fungal versatility from the literature is time-consuming and difficult to scale. By using machine learning, we can now scan thousands of papers in just a few minutes to flag species that might be switching roles—such as a fungus that normally helps a plant grow but also turns into a decomposer when the plant dies.”
Beatrice M. Bock
The pilot study tested four different AI models to see which was best at understanding the nuances of biological language. The top-performing model, BioBERT, achieved nearly 90% accuracy in identifying fungal lifestyles.
What did BioBERT have that the other models didn’t? For one, it had the power of capitalization. Bock found that “cased” models—those that recognize capital letters—performed significantly better than those that did not. That’s likely because capital letters often signal species’ scientific names, like Fusarium, which are crucial for AI to understand the context of the research.
The path ahead
Bock said that in a commitment to transparency, she has made all the code and data available for free online, allowing other scientists to build upon her work and track traits in other organisms, like insects or plants.
While Bock’s study focused on a small group of papers as a proof-of-concept, it opens the door for much larger projects. Future versions of the tool could predict how a fungus’s behavior might change under specific environmental conditions, such as drought or extreme heat.
“As fungal trait databases continue to grow in importance for biodiversity assessments, automated text mining offers a path toward more efficient, consistent and comprehensive trait annotation.”
Beatrice M. Bock
Original sources:
Bock B (2026) Automated extraction of fungal trophic modes from literature using BioBERT: an open pilot workflow. Research Ideas and Outcomes 12: e176590. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.12.e176590
Story originally published by: EurekAlert! (2026). Using AI to uncover the secret lives of fungi. [online] Available at: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1114462 [Accessed 2 Feb. 2026]. Republished with permission.
Follow the latest publications and news from the Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO) journal on Bluesky, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Molecular analyses of soil and water commonly reveal large proportions of fungal taxa that cannot be assigned to any taxonomic or functional groups. Some of these so-called ‘dark taxa’ have been encoded alphanumerically, while others have remained completely overlooked.
Recent advances in long-read sequencing techniques have produced large amounts of high-quality rRNA marker gene data about eukaryotic organisms, but many of these taxa have remained unknown at the highest taxonomic levels: phylum and kingdom.
Now, via a thorough analysis of the EUKARYOME long-read database, an international team led by Prof Leho Tedersoo (University of Tartu, Estonia) has discovered that a large proportion of the unknown eukaryotes belong to deep, hitherto undescribed fungal lineages.
By developing innovative approaches in taxonomy and performing rigorous phylogenetic analyses, the researchers described 30 novel fungal lineages from the order to phylum levels, including the type species of these groups. They published their findings in the open-access journal MycoKeys.
Names of new taxa were developed and voted for by all co-authors, with the names referring to type locality using the native language stems (Amerindian, Sámi, Estonian) prevailing.
The authors also proposed the taxonomic terms “nucleotype” and “legitype” to refer to holotype-derived DNA samples and DNA sequences, respectively, which under certain circumstances (e.g., when holotype is lost) could also be used as types.
The taxonomic approach developed by Tedersoo et al. provides a means of describing and communicating unseen, potentially uncultivable microeukaryotic taxa.
Original source
Tedersoo L, Hosseyni Moghadam MS, Panksep K, Prins V, Anslan S, Mikryukov V, Bahram M, Abarenkov K, Kõljalg U, Esmaeilzadeh-Salestani K, Pawłowska J, Wurzbacher C, Ding Y, Alkahtani SH, Nilsson RH (2025) Thirty novel fungal lineages: formal description based on environmental samples and DNA. MycoKeys 124: 1-121. https://doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.124.161674
From the 10th to 14th March, 2025, Havana, Cuba, hosted the XIII Latin American Congress of Botany, a fantastic event that brought together botanists and mycologists from far and wide to share knowledge and celebrate the rich botanical heritage of Latin America.
Pensoft was proud to participate in the congress, showcasing its commitment to advancing plant research and establishing relationships with the global academic community. As always, the Pensoft team was thrilled to meet up with familiar authors, editors, and reviewers, as well as hundreds of new faces.
Eldis R. Bécquer
Alicia Rodriguez and Denitsa Peneva
Carolina Garrizo Garcia and Boriana Ovcharova
Rafael Silva and Boriana Ovcharova
Event organisers Alejandro Palmarola and Ramona Oviedo with Lyubomir Penev
The stand was adorned with many promotional materials featuring artwork by Denitsa Peneva, which proved to be a major draw for the attendees.
Promotional material at Pensoft’s stand.
On Friday, March 14, 2025, Pensoft’s CEO and Founder, Prof Dr Lyubomir Penev, delivered a compelling talk titled “Advancing Plant Taxonomy and Conservation through Scholarly Communication.” This presentation delved into the workflows and tools designed to streamline data publishing and enhance scholarly communication throughout the academic portfolio of the open-access publisher. Key aspects covered included semantic enrichment, data publishing, automated data import/export and science communication, all of which are crucial for advancing biodiversity research and conservation efforts.
The event marked another milestone in Pensoft’s ongoing efforts to bridge the gap between research and publication, ensuring that botanical knowledge reaches a wider audience and contributes to the conservation of plant diversity worldwide. As the botanical community looks forward to future gatherings, Pensoft remains ready to support and enhance the dissemination of botanical science globally.
A new review article published in the OA journal IMA Fungus sheds light on the phenomenon of fungal fairy rings, mysterious circular patterns of altered vegetation found in grasslands and forests.
In the review, researchers Maurizio Zotti, Giuliano Bonanomi, and Stefano Mazzoleni from the University of Naples Federico II explore the history, ecology, and impacts of these intriguing fungal formations.
Fungal fairy rings (FFRs), they explain, occur when certain fungi grow radially outward through the soil from a central point, breaking down organic matter and affecting plant growth in distinctive circular patterns. While folklore once attributed these rings to magic, scientists now understand them as a natural process driven by underground fungal activity.
Cross-section of a fungal fairy ring (FFR) transect providing a visual representation of the mycelial mat distribution in the soil, with arrows representing growth direction.
In their paper, the researchers synthesise centuries of research on FFRs, from early observations in the 1800s to modern studies using cutting-edge genomic techniques. “The study of FFRs provides a valuable opportunity to delve deeper into the complex field of soil and fungal ecology, bridging multiple scientific disciplines such as mycology, microbiology, chemistry and botany,” they write.
Describing how different types of FFRs form and expand over time, the authors note that some persist for hundreds of years, reaching massive sizes: “In French grasslands, large FFRs of I. geotropa, with a diameter of 800 m, were estimated to be around 700 years old.”
FFRs of Agaricuscrocodilinus in Monte Pratello subalpine grassland, Rivisondoli, Abruzzo, Italian Apennines. (Photo by Franco Carnevale).
The effects of FFRs vary substantially. Indeed, the study explores the various ways FFRs impact soil properties and plant communities as they spread. In some cases, the fungal activity leads to lush green rings of stimulated plant growth. In others, it causes bands of dead or stunted vegetation.
FFRs don’t just affect plants; they also influence soil microbes. The review describes how “the development of FFR mycelial mats is associated with a general simplification of the bacterial community” in some cases, while other studies have found increased microbial diversity within fairy rings.
FFR examples (left) and a comparison of soil densely occupied by mycelial mat vs. unaffected soil (right).
The researcher team emphasises that there is still much to learn about the ecological roles and formation mechanisms of FFRs. Several promising areas should be explored in future research, including investigating the volatile compounds produced by fairy ring fungi and using advanced sequencing methods to unravel how FFRs regulate species coexistence in soil and plant communities.
Concluding the study the authors assert that, while improved knowledge of FFRs may have removed some of their mystical aura, “such removal of thin magic halo has certainly not reduced the wonder for the beauty of nature in its ever surprisingly dynamic pattern and intertwined complex systems.”
Regarding recent changes to the journal, Editor-in-Chief Marc Stadler said: “The journal has a new editorial board, including many experienced as well as young, excellent scientists from around the world. Together, they cover a broad spectrum of mycological subdisciplines. They have already helped with processing of the new manuscripts, part of which were transferred from the previous publisher.
“We hope that the revenue that the IMA gains from the APC can substantially contribute to a sustainable income of the association. This will hopefully allow us to support mycologists in low-to middle income countries, initiatives to implement fungal conservation and other important tasks that need to be tackled by the mycological community in the future.”
See the full list of newly published articles below:
Yet another hectic year has passed for our team at Pensoft, so it feels right to look back at the highlights from the last 12 months, as we buckle up for the leaps and strides in 2025.
In the past, we have used the occasion to take you back to the best moments of our most popular journals (see this list of 2023 highlights from ZooKeys, MycoKeys, PhytoKeys and more!); share milestones related to our ARPHA publishing platform (see the new journals, integrations and features from 2023); or let you reminisce about the coolest research published across our journals during the year(check out our Top 10 new species from 2021).
In 2022, when we celebrated our 30th anniversary on the academic scene, we extended our festive spirit throughout the year as we dived deep into those fantastic three decades. We put up Pensoft’s timeline and finished the year with a New Species Showdown tournament, where our followers on (what was back then) Twitter voted twice a week for their favourite species EVER described on the pages of our taxonomic journals.
Spoiler alert: we will be releasing our 2024 Top 10 New Species on Monday, 23 December, so you’d better go to the right of this screen and subscribe to our blog!
As we realised we might’ve been a bit biased towards our publishing activities over the years, this time, hereby, we chose to present you a retrospection that captures our best 2024 moments from across the departments, and shed light on how the publishing, technology and project communication endeavours fit together to make Pensoft what it is.
In truth, we take pride in being an exponentially growing family of multiple departments that currently comprises over 60 full-time employees and about a dozen freelancers working from all corners of the world, including Australia, Canada, Belgium and the United Kingdom. Together, we are all determined to make sure we continuously improve our service to all who have trusted us: authors, reviewers, editors, client journals, learned societies, research institutions, project consortia and other external collaborators.
After all, great deeds are only possible when you team up with great like-minded people!
In 2024, at Pensoft, we were hugely pleased to see a significant growth in the published output at almost all our journals, including record-breaking numbers in both submissions and publications at flagship titles of ours, including the Biodiversity Data Journal, PhytoKeys and MycoKeys.
Later in 2024, our colleagues, who work together with our clients to ensure their journals comply with the requirements of the top scholarly databases before they apply for indexation, informed us that another two journals in our portfolio have had their applications to Clarivate’s Web of Science successfully accepted. These are the newest journal of the International Association of Vegetation Science: Vegetation and Classification, and Metabarcoding and Metagenomics: a journal we launched in 2017 in collaboration with a team of brilliant scientists working together at the time within the DNAquaNet COST Action.
In 2024, we also joined the celebrations of our long-time partners at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, whose three journals: Zoosystematics and Evolution, Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift and Fossil Record are all part of our journal portfolio. This year marked the 10th Open Access anniversary of the three journals.
In the meantime, we also registered a record in new titles either joining the Pensoft portfolio or opting for ARPHA Platform’s white-label publishing solution, where journal owners retain exclusivity for the publication of their titles, yet use ARPHA’s end-to-end technology and as many human-provided services as necessary.
Pensoft’s CEO and founder Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev with Prof. Dr. Marc Stadler, Editor-in-Chief of IMA Fungus and President of the International Mycological Association at the Pensoft booth at the 12th International Mycological Congress (August, the Netherlands).
Amongst our new partners are the International Mycological Association who moved their official journal IMA Fungus to ARPHA Platform. As part of Pensoft’s scholarly portfolio, the renowned journal joins another well-known academic title in the field of mycology: MycoKeys, which was launched by Pensoft in 2011. The big announcement was aptly made public at this year’s 12th International Mycological Congress where visitors of the Pensoft stand could often spot newly elected IMA President and IMA Fungus Chief editor: Marc Stadler chatting with our founder and CEO Lyubomir Penev by the Pensoft/MycoKeys booth.
On our end, we did not stop supporting enthusiastic and proactive scientists in their attempt to bridge gaps in scientific knowledge. In January, we launched the Estuarine Management and Technologies journal together with Dr. Soufiane Haddout of the Ibn Tofail University, Morocco.
Later on, Dr. Franco Andreone (Museo Regionale di Scienze Naturali, Italy) sought us with the idea to launch a journal addressing the role of natural history museums and herbaria collections in scientific progress. This collaboration resulted in the Natural History Collections and Museomics journal, officially announced at the joint TDWG-SPNHC conference in Okinawa, Japan in August.
Around this time, we finalised our similarly exciting journal project in partnership with Prof. Dr. Volker Grimm (UFZ, Germany), Prof. Dr. Karin Frank (UFZ, Germany), Prof. Dr. Mark E. Hauber (City University of New York) and Prof. Dr. Florian Jeltsch (University of Potsdam, Germany). The outcome of this collaboration is called Individual-based Ecology: a journal that aims to promote an individual-based perspective in ecology, as it closes the knowledge gap between individual-level responses and broader ecological patterns.
The three newly-launched journals are all published under the Diamond Open Access model, where neither access, nor publication is subject to charges.
As you can see, we have a lot to be proud of in terms of our journals. This is also why in 2024 our team took a record number of trips to attend major scientific events, where we got the chance to meet face-to-face with long-time editors, authors, reviewers and readers of our journals. Even more exciting was meeting the new faces of scientific research and learning about their own take on scholarship and academic journals.
Pensoft’s CEO and founder Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev welcomed editors at PhytoKeys to the Pensoft-PhytoKeys-branded booth at the XX International Botanical Congress in July 2024 (Spain).
We cannot possibly comment on Pensoft’s tech progress in 2024 without mentioning the EU-funded project BiCIKL (acronym for Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library) that we coordinated for three years ending up last April.
This 36-month endeavour 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.
Following these three years of collaborative work, we reported a great many notable research outputs from our consortium (find about them in the open-science project collection in the Research Ideas and Outcomes journal, titled “Towards interlinked FAIR biodiversity knowledge: The BiCIKL perspective”) that culminated in the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub: a one-stop portal that allows users to access FAIR and interlinked biodiversity data and services in a few clicks; and also a set of policy recommendations addressing key policy makers, research institutions and funders who deal with various types of data about the world’s biodiversity, and are thereby responsible to ensuring there findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability (FAIR-ness).
Apart from coordinating BiCIKL, we also worked side-by-side with our partners to develop, refine and test each other’s tools and services, in order to make sure that they communicate efficiently with each other, thereby aligning with the principles of FAIR data and the needs of the scientific community in the long run.
During those three years we made a lot of refinements to our OpenBiodiv: a biodiversity database containing knowledge extracted from scientific literature, built as an Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management System, and our ARPHA Writing Tool. The latter is an XML-based online authoring environment using a large set of pre-formatted templates, where manuscripts are collaboratively written, edited and submitted to participating journals published on ARPHA Platform. What makes the tool particularly special is its multiple features that streamline and FAIRify data publishing as part of a scientific publication, especially in the field of biodiversity knowledge. In fact, we made enough improvements to the ARPHA Writing Tool that we will be soon officially releasing its 2.0 version!
OpenBiodiv – The Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management System
ARPHA Writing Tool 2.0
Amongst our collaborative projects are the Nanopublications for Biodiversity workflow that we co-developed with KnowledgePixels to allow researchers to ‘fragment’ their most important scientific findings into machine-actionable and machine-interpretable statements. Being the smallest units of publishable information, these ‘pixels of knowledge’ present an assertion about anything that can be uniquely identified and attributed to its author and serve to communicate a single statement, its original source (provenance) and citation record (publication info).
Nanopublications for Biodiversity
In partnership with the Swiss-based Text Mining group of Patrick Ruch at SIB and the text- and data-mining association Plazi, we brought the SIB Literature Services (SIBiLS) database one step closer to solidifying its “Biodiversity PMC” portal and working title.
Understandably, we spent a lot of effort, time and enthusiasm in raising awareness about our most recent innovations, in addition to our long-standing workflows, formats and tools developed with the aim to facilitate open and efficient access to scientific data; and their integration into published scholarly work, as well as receiving well-deserved recognition for their collection.
We just can’t stress it enough how important and beneficial it is for everyone to have high-quality FAIR data, ideally made available within a formal scientific publication!
🗨️Imagine if ALL these links were provided as hyperlinks within a #scholarly publication!
Pensoft’s CTO Teodor Georgiev talks about innovative methods and good practices in the publication of biodiversity data in scholarly papers at the First national meeting of the Bulgarian Barcode of Life (BgBOL) consortium (December, Bulgaria).
🤔What is a Data Paper?
👍 A means to describe a #dataset – like the ones on @GBIF – in a standardised, widely accepted #scientific article format.
👇🧵Highlights from @LyuboPenev's talk at the int'l symposium "#BiodiversityData in montane & arid Eurasia" in Kazakhstan 🇰🇿
Pensoft’s CEO and founder Prof. Dr. Lyubomir Penev presenting his “Data papers on biodiversity” talk at the “Biodiversity data in montane and arid Eurasia” symposium jointly organized by GBIF and by the Institute of Zoology of Republic of Kazakhstan (November, Kazakhstan).
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📸Today, at the @EASEeditors symposium, our @teodorpensoft gave a sneak peek into the AI-assisted tools at @ARPHAplatform we have been working on (e.g. Word -> JATS XML conversion) and the #ARPHA Writing Tool 2.0 (coming up in early 2025)!🎉
Pensoft’s CTO Teodor Georgiev presents new features and workflows currently in testing at the ARPHA Writing Tool 2.0 at the EASE Autumn Symposium 2024 (online event).Pensoft’s Head of Journal development, Marketing and PR Iva Boyadzhieva talks about Pensoft’s data publishing approach and innovations at the German Ecological Society 53rd Annual Conference (September, Germany).
Pensoft as a science communicator
At our Project team, which is undoubtedly the fastest developing department at Pensoft, science communicators are working closely with technology and publishing teams to help consortia bring their scientific results closer to policy actors, decision-makers and the society at large.
Ultimately, bridging the notorious chasm between researchers and global politics boils down to mutual understanding and dialogue.
Pensoft’s communication team attended COP16 (November 2024, Colombia) along with partners at the consortia of CO-OP4CBD, BioAgora and RESPIN: three Horizon Europe projects, whose communication and dissemination is led by Pensoft.
Throughout 2024, the team, comprising 20 science communicators and project managers, has been working as part of 27 EU-funded project consortia, including nine that have only started this year (check out all partnering projects on the Pensoft website, ordered from most recently started to oldest). Apart from communicating key outcomes and activities during the duration of the projects, at many of the projects, our team has also been actively involved in their grant proposal drafting, coordination, administration, platform development, graphic and web design and others (see all project services offered by Pensoft to consortia).
📸As leaders of the “Stakeholder engagement, comms & dissemination” WP at @BCubedProject, we joined the annual meeting to report on project branding, #scicomm & #DataManagement.
Naturally, we had a seat on the front row during many milestones achieved by our partners at all those 27 ongoing projects, and communicated to the public by our communicators.
Amongst those are the release of the InsectsCount web application developed within the Horizon 2020 project SHOWCASE. Through innovative gamification elements, the app encourages users to share valuable data about flower-visiting insects, which in turn help researchers gain new knowledge about the relationship between observed species and the region’s land use and management practices (learn more about InsectsCount on the SHOWCASE prroject website).
Another fantastic project output was the long-awaited dataset of maps of annual forest disturbances across 38 European countries derived from the Landsat satellite data archive published by the Horizon Europe project ForestPaths in April (find more about the European Forest Disturbance Atlas on the ForestPaths project website).
In a major company highlight, last month, our project team participated in COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan with a side event dedicated to the role of open science and science communication in climate- and biodiversity-friendly policy.
Pensoft’s participation at COP29 – as well as our perspective on FAIR data and open science – were recently covered in an interview by Exposed by CMD (a US-based news media accredited to cover the event) with our science communicator Alexandra Korcheva and project manager Boris Barov.
You see, A LOT of great things worth celebrating happened during the year for us at Pensoft: all thanks to ceaselessly flourishing collaboration based on transparency, trust and integrity. Huge ‘THANK YOU!’ goes to everyone who has joined us in our endeavours!
Here’s to many more shared achievements coming up in 2025!
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