From Brazil to Switzerland, from Germany to the United States of America. Scientists from all around the World saw in the innovative approach of the BiCIKL Project an opportunity to address some issue or need, and they responded to our Open Call which was announced last summer. Now, the selection within the Expressions of Interest is done: the BiCIKL project has concluded a Biodiversity project evaluation and selection process identifying a range of diverse Biodiversity-related project ideas that are looking for innovative approaches to tackle more complex data challenges.
We are also proud to have managed to go on with more projects than expected since we will be advancing 8 actions instead of the projected 4 or 6.
We are really pleased to reveal that 8 projects will be proceeding, as follows:
Cyber catalogue and revision of the nematode genus Enchodelus (Nordiidae, Dorylaimida), with Dr Milka Elshishka from Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria as the lead proposer.
Automating the interlinkage between GBIF data and WoRMS taxonomy to enhance the data flow from GBIF to OBIS with Dr Hanieh Saeedi from the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum, Marine Zoology, Biodiversity Information, Frankfurt am Main, Germany as the lead proposer.
Digital access to data on southern African asiloid fly species from taxonomic publications with Dr Torsten Dikow from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, USA as the lead proposer
Rescuing the taxonomy of Brazilian cicadas: linking database with research infrastructures with Dr Tatiana Petersen Ruschel from the Programa de Pós-Graduação de Biodiversidade Animal, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil as the lead proposer
New tools to highlight and shortlist enigmatic fungi from eDNA datasets for further scientific exploration with Dr Henrik Nilsson from the University of Gothenburg, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Göteborg, Sweden as the lead proposer.
Exploiting and sharing existing and new knowledge in the frame of the Digital Botanical Gardens Initiative with Dr Pierre-Marie Allard from the COMMONS Lab, Department of Biology, University of Fribourg, Switzerland as the lead proposer.
Catalysing a culture change in the way biodiversity data are published using the unique semantic publishing workflow of the Biodiversity Data Journal with Dr Anne Thessen from Waltham CT, USA as the lead proposer.
Development of a virtual Frahm collection on the basis of 80,000 bryophyte specimens, transcribed and semantically enriched by Citizen Scientists with Dr Bernard Goffinet from Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology 75 North Eagleville Road, University of Connecticut, Storrs CT 06269-3043, USA as the lead proposer.
Each of the projects will be addressed by the various BiCIKL partners over the next few months. First understanding the nature of the challenge in more detail and later by integrating relevant data from across the many Biodiversity related infrastructures managed by the BiCIKL partners. We expect the first results to appear, initially published via the BiCIKL website in the autumn of 2023.
Stay tuned on our channels, we’ll be publishing more about those projects, to let you know them better!