Using DNA to save Nature: Europe's next biodiversity frontier
A landmark alliance of DNA experts across Europe signals the start of an unprecedented effort to build a continent-wide system that applies genomics for protecting European biodiversity
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view moreCredit: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
That Europe's biodiversity faces unprecedented challenges is nothing new: species are vanishing, ecosystems are degrading, and the policy-makers crafting the policies to address these challenges depend on data that is, at times, scarce.
What is probably less known is that biodiversity genomics - the one that focuses not on humans, but on other living organisms, like animals and plants - is living a revolution that may well provide just the right knowledge that policy-makers need. Never before has DNA-based science been able to identify species, monitor ecosystems, and understand genetic diversity as cheaply, efficiently, and at scale as it can now.
The European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA), the International Barcode of Life Europe (iBOL Europe), and the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) have signed a historic agreement for biodiversity genomics in Europe. These three large scientific communities have committed to building a coordinated European infrastructure for biodiversity genomics: one that will allow experts to work in a connected system of shared resources, technology, and data.
The vision has taken shape through the Biodiversity Genomics Europe plus (BGE+) project, and aligns with the environmental goals of the European Commission, which has welcomed steps in this direction. In fact, Costas Kadis, EU Commissioner for fisheries and oceans, recently weighed in on the need for common protocols and comparable data, and pointed to the possibility of achieving this goal through an improved and dedicated biodiversity genomics infrastructure for Europe.
"We are entering a new phase", says Dimitris Koureas, director of BGE+. "Europe already has extraordinary expertise in taxonomy, genomics, bioinformatics, biodiversity collections, and environmental monitoring. The challenge now is bringing these strengths together in a way that allows us to work at scale in an interconnected system, beyond geographic and political limitations".
The initiative emphasises one of the biggest challenges for efficient biodiversity research today: scale. Although more than two million species have been formally described worldwide, scientists estimate that millions more remain unknown, and we all know what this means: we cannot protect what we do not know. But understanding and monitoring biodiversity at the speed required by today's environmental challenges demands new approaches that boost scientific collaboration and interoperability. Initiatives like BGE+ show the way ahead.
In the words of Gabriela Dankova, BGE+ project manager:
Tackling current biodiversity challenges requires effective collaboration of our communities across Europe, open knowledge exchange, solid technical infrastructure, harmonised processes, and, above all, a shared vision. BGE+ brings these elements together, enabling and amplifying the work of biodiversity genomics communities in Europe and beyond.
Scientists know that discovering and documenting all species is only part of the work. They also need to understand how species adapt to environmental change. That is the reason why BGE+ brings together two different strands of genomics. DNA barcoding allows scientists to identify species quickly and accurately. Genome sequencing provides deeper insights into adaptation, evolution, and resilience. Combined with taxonomic expertise and advanced data systems, these tools are creating entirely new possibilities for understanding and protecting nature.
BGE+’s long-term ambition is to establish the services, standards, capacity, and infrastructure needed for biodiversity genomics to become a routine part of how Europe studies, monitors, manages, and restores nature. The stakes could not be higher.
About Pensoft Publishers
Pensoft is an independent, open-access scholarly publisher and technology provider with over 40 biodiversity journals, and an active consortium member and communication partner in 30+ EU projects. A pioneer in semantic enrichments and data interoperability since 2010, Pensoft has long developed tools and workflows designed to make scientific outputs more findable, accessible, and reusable. Central to this is the company's proprietary, end-to-end ARPHA Publishing Platform, which handles the entire editorial process: from manuscript submission and peer review to final publication in PDF, XML, and semantically enhanced HTML.
Within BGE+, Pensoft plays a leading role knowledge sharing, skills development, and open publishing, by integrating articles with datasets and metadata through the ARPHA Writing Tool to support FAIR principles and policy-relevant evidence, while supporting iBOL Europe's community engagement and capacity building through training, network collaboration, distributed DNA barcoding facilities, and the growth of a European DNA barcode reference library.
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Credit
Naturalis Biodiversity Center
By saving ecosystems, environmental regulations help prevent biodiversity loss
Conservation policies associated with improved water quality, study finds
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Long-term conservation policies may help restore freshwater ecosystems and prevent extreme species loss, new research suggests.
As emerging threats such as warming temperatures, pollution and other cumulative stressors put pressure on freshwater populations and contribute to global biodiversity crises, experts have sought to assess how effective environmental protections are at curbing this decline.
Now, researchers have revealed that long-term improvements in water quality, as well as the increased occurrence of certain aquatic species, are likely associated with the implementation of broad environmental regulations such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.
“Rivers provide a lot of cultural, recreational and ecosystem services, and we also depend on fresh and clean water to survive,” said Casey Pennock, senior author of the study and an assistant professor in the aquatic ecology laboratory at The Ohio State University. “That’s really the motivation behind these conservation policies, to ensure that the natural environment is usable for both wildlife and all other things we care about.”
Aside from negatively impacting local biodiversity, contaminated water can destroy fishing industries and damage human health. It’s thanks to widespread environmental protections that water quality in the U.S. is better today than it was only a few decades ago, said Pennock. His team’s newfound evidence for this claim stems from water quality and aquatic species data collected between 1970 and 2023 across seven major river basins in Ohio.
By using that data to analyze how fish, insects and freshwater mussel communities changed over time, the team’s findings showed that lower levels of pollutants in rivers — such as zinc, ammonia and lead — corresponded to increases in range for many aquatic species. These findings suggest the affected groups were those with heightened sensitivity to poor water quality.
Their observations indicated that as water quality improved, 71 fish species and 171 insect groups became more common across the state of Ohio, large river basins, with only a few species decreasing. Freshwater mussels, however, experienced mixed responses over time, with nine species increasing and 10 decreasing in occurrence. The composition of fish, aquatic insects and freshwater mussels also changed significantly over time in all seven river basins researchers studied.
“Ecological communities are not static; they’re dynamic systems,” said Pennock. “Monitoring them is important to assessing how their trajectories change as new contaminants come online.”
The study was recently published in the journal Ecological Indicators.
Despite how critical freshwater diversity is to the health of all of Earth’s ecosystems, it can be difficult for people to link the issue of conservation to the benefits they reap from it – such as protection from infectious diseases and a safe drinking water supply – in their everyday lives, said Lindsey Bruckerhoff, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor in the aquatic ecology laboratory at Ohio State.
“Our work revolves around trying to prevent further declines of imperiled species and keep diversity on the landscape,” she said. “So extensive research like this that highlights the positive effects of those systems on humans is incredibly rare.”
Additionally, as a lack of broad-scale monitoring efforts has made it difficult for researchers to document species-specific responses to prolonged environmental changes, this study, which compiles observations from numerous archives, is a vital addition to future conservation efforts.
“We now have a dataset where we can actually analyze long-term biodiversity trends,” said Bruckerhoff. “It’s really exciting to be able to chart success in that way.”
According to the study, implementing nationwide policies also motivates municipalities to upgrade their own conservation initiatives. In response to the Clean Water Act, for example, Columbus instituted a $200 million municipal wastewater upgrade initiative for the Scioto River, leading to significant declines in levels of ammonia and heavy metals that continue to decrease today.
Overall, their results suggest that policies that promote conservation gains for animals like fish and insects and, by extension, protect human health, should remain in place, the researchers say. These outcomes also provide evidence of the benefits derived from environmental regulations.
“This work shows there’s still more work to do,” said Pennock. “It tells us that if we deregulate or allow more pollution to happen, then those gains could reverse themselves, to our detriment.”
This study was supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Ohio Biodiversity Conservation Partnership. Other Ohio State co-authors include Seth Drake and Nathaniel Shoobs, as well as Robert Miltner from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
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Journal
Ecological Indicators
Article Title
Water quality improvements correspond with increased human use and occurrence of fish, aquatic insects, and freshwater mussels
