Biodiversity Community

Biodiversity encompasses the full range of life on Earth, spanning populations, communities and ecosystems. The loss of biological diversity is widely recognised by scientists and the public as a critical challenge for humanity. Addressing this global crisis requires knowledge of the diversity of life on Earth, including how it functions, how organisms interact, and how these systems respond to environmental changes. Research that advances our understanding of phenotypic or genetic diversity plays a vital role in meeting this challenge.

Current biodiversity data infrastructures and resources reflect  long-standing recognition by multiple stakeholders of their importance. Yet, this landscape remains highly heterogeneous. The diversity of tools, platforms, and datasets presents challenges – not only technical, such as in data integration and analysis – but also for the broader scientific community, which must navigate a fragmented and often complex ecosystem of resources. 

Building connections across the many infrastructures and services active in biodiversity research is key to overcoming these challenges. These endeavours support the broader ELIXIR framework of striving to bring data science solutions to the priority area of Biodiversity, food security and pathogens.

Community objectives

The ELIXIR Biodiversity Community is working to align infrastructures, mobilise data and connect services that support biodiversity science and policy. Our strategic objectives are as follows.

Supporting data delivery

• Enhance ELIXIR’s role in delivering connected data for biodiversity research.
• Expose and augment relevant ELIXIR services and infrastructures contributing to efforts to catalogue, protect and restore biodiversity and ecosystem services.
• Support ELIXIR Nodes in expanding their biodiversity-related activities, in alignment with the new Programme priority areas. 
• Communicate ELIXIR activities and services relevant to the biodiversity domain to broader audiences including scientists, policymakers and the general public.

Advancing standards and best practices 

• Support and promote the development and adoption of global standards, formats, guidelines and ontologies across the biodiversity domain.
• Support the development of best practices in research data management (RDM) for biodiversity research, with a focus on molecular data, while remaining inclusive of other areas.
• Curate and maintain a dedicated RDMkit biodiversity domain page collating relevant documentation and tools that support good practice in RDM.

Promoting tools and workflows 

• Identify, curate and promote high-quality biodiversity-related analysis tools and services in the wider user community.
• Connect developers with data-generation initiatives and data users to fuel synergies that deliver tools and workflows serving their needs.
• Maintain curated catalogues of FAIR biodiversity-focused tools and workflows in Bio.tools and WorkflowHub.

Enhancing usability and interoperability

• Identify and act on opportunities to develop technical solutions that improve connectivity among heterogeneous biodiversity data infrastructures and resources.
• Foster collaborative exchanges between users and providers of biodiversity-related databases and infrastructures to improve usability, accessibility and functionality.
• Promote the use of persistent identifiers across the domain, with an emphasis on taxonomies as a foundational element of biodiversity knowledge.

Fostering knowledge transfer

• Connect with other infrastructures and global initiatives in the domain to improve the global offer of service to the user community
• Support community-driven skill sharing focused on understanding how to benefit from the use of available tools, standards and best practices.
• Connect developers with user communities through training activities that respond to evolving technologies, workflows and services. 
• Expose and promote training resources such as TeSS, the Galaxy Training Network and RDMkit.