mastodon 4.7.3GBIF—the Global Biodiversity Information Facility—is an international network and biodiversity research infrastructure 
🍄 A new soil fungi dataset from #Colombia reveals extraordinary fungal diversity across páramos, Andean forests, tropical savannas, rainforests and coastal ecosystems.
Fungi were sampled along altitudinal gradients from 3,600 m above sea level to the Caribbean coast. Using genetic sequencing, researchers documented more than 13,000 fungi OTUs, including 17 phyla, 121 classes, 185 orders and 450 families.
🌍 25 years of enabling open access to biodiversity data.
🤝 25 years of global collaboration.
🌱 25 years of supporting research and policy worldwide.
We’re celebrating 25 years of GBIF!!🥳 🎂
Since being established in 2001, our network, infrastructure and impact have grown significantly, now providing access to more than 3.7 billion biodiversity records.
We’re proud to celebrate our history on #InternationalDayForBiologicalDiversity and look forward to our next chapter. 👀
🍄 What happens to fungal life after decades of mining contamination?
In Dúbrava, #Slovakia, fungal communities are responding to landscapes shaped by decades of antimony mining. 💎
🧬 A recently published dataset to GBIF explores fungal diversity using ITS metabarcoding of soil samples collected across contaminated sites in the Nízke Tatry Mountains to assess how ecosystems shift in response to long-term industrial use.
🦟 The final data papers from a global TDR/@who@mstdn.social, GBIF and @GigaScience@mastodon.social initiative have now been published in @GigaByte@mas.to, marking the completion of a four-year effort to expand access to disease vector data! 🎉
The collaborative sponsorship and support programme mobilized more than 750,000 vector records to GBIF, supporting research and response efforts for diseases including malaria, dengue, Chagas disease and Mpox.
Read more: 🔗 https://gbif.link/vector-data-papers
After three years of collaboration with 22 partners, the #BioDT project has wrapped up!
The project advanced biodiversity digital twins and ecological modelling, 🌍🧬with the Secretariat and #GBIFNorway supporting the development of prototype digital twins, new biodiversity data standards, advances in eDNA integration and ecological monitoring and greater interoperability of data between data infrastructures.
Hola desde Uruguay! 💛💙🤍
The Secretariat team are excited to facilitate the biodiversity data mobilization as part of the @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu funded Biodiversity Information for Development Programme along with our incredible trainers, mentors and regional representatives!
The workshop covers data capture, management and publishing and is attended by 30 participants from the LAC region. 🌎
Thank you to our hosts #GBIFUruguay & Ministerio de Ambiente
Hunting for eggs this weekend? 🥚🐰 Some of the best eggs aren't made of chocolate 🍫
Tinamous birds are relatively inconspicuous, adapted to be camouflaged within their habitats. But interestingly, they lay egg-ceptional eggs in a variety of colours.
Researchers have taken steps to crack the code, 🐦determining that egg colour likely evolved as a mating signal in this lineage.
Read more:🔗https://gbif.link/egg
💚 #BCubedProject FINAL online training happening tomorrow: The b3verse: an R package suite to process cubes and calculate indicators
📍27 March, 15:00 CET 💡 What to expect?
Learn about the b3verse and how it can be used to retrieve, process and explore occurrence cubes, and how to calculate indicators.
GBIF is recruiting its next Executive Secretary 🌍
This leadership role will guide the world’s largest biodiversity information network into its next phase, supporting open access to nearly four billion biodiversity records used daily across numerous branches of science and policy.
GBIF seeks a visionary leader with experience in biodiversity science, international collaboration and management. 💚
📅 Applications close 24 July 2026
📍 Copenhagen, Denmark
🔗https://gbif.link/Executive-Secretary-2026
🔦 Amplifying amphipods with two new datasets from publishers in #Italy! 💚🤍❤️
Dataset 1: encompasses records from the north-eastern Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea collected from 1936-2024.
🔗: https://gbif.link/amphipod_1
Dataset 2: provides an updated inventory of amphipod species occurring in Italian marine waters (Tyrrhenian, the Ionian and the Adriatic sub-basins) collected between 1980-2025.
🔗: https://gbif.link/amphipod_2
⚡ Reminder to register for the virtual data mobilization workshop for West Asia hosted by the GBIF Asia Regional Support Team. 💙
This workshop is held across May-June 2026, and is based on the GBIF Biodiversity Data Mobilization curriculum.
Application deadline: 17 April 2026🔗 https://gbif.link/virtual-data-mob-west-asia
🌍 The event is intended for government and organizational reps from Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
💚 B-Cubed Project online training happening tomorrow: Making use of colorblind friendly maps🗺️
📍20 March, 15:00 CET 💡 What to expect?
This session will highlight the importance of colouring maps for daltonic people, including good practices and coding solutions to maximize accessibility.
📣 Calling organizations that manage large #DNA-derived biodiversity datasets and reference libraries
We've just launched two calls for proposals to support the GBIF SPLICE project
📚Preparing DNA reference libraries for GBIF integration
🔹Funding up to €10,000 per project
🔗 https://gbif.link/SPLICE-DNA-ref-libraries
🧬Building pipelines for publishing DNA-derived data through GBIF
🔹Funding up to €20,000 per project
🔗https://gbif.link/SPLICE-DNA-pipelines
📍 Application deadline: 3 August 2026
📣 Applications for 2026 DataCamp licences are OPEN!
Through our ongoing partnership with DataCamp we're proud to facilitate free access to online digital learning courses for data users in the GBIF community.
🍄 Join more than 500 biodiversity professionals in the GBIF network who have completed data courses across topics such as Python, RStats, SQL, AI and GitHub.
🔗Apply: https://gbif.link/DCD_2026
🌊 Tis the sea-son for new datasets!
Six new eDNA datasets have been mobilized to GBIF from #NOAA via @obis@mastodon.social
🧬DNA was extracted from seawater samples from expeditions across the Central North and Western North Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Northeast Pacific between 2021-2023. Marine organisms were identified through eDNA metabarcoding, totaling 692,182 occurrences across the datasets.
Datasets: 🔗https://gbif.link/NOAA
News: 🔗https://gbif.link/NOAA_news
May the Fourth be with you ⭐
From galaxies far, far away 🚀 to taxonomy on Earth, the #StarWars universe has left its mark on occurrence records in GBIF.
Take a look at some species names that are inspired by Star Wars in GBIF 🌠
The Secretariat's Community and Capacity team are in #Uruguay this week for a series of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)-focused events.
🦎 1. @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu funded Biodiversity Information for Development LAC data mobilization workshop
🦋 2. LAC regional nodes meeting
Thank you to #GBIFUruguay and Ministerio de Ambiente Uruguay for hosting these events!
Keep an eye out for more updates across the week 👀
Happy 20th birthday #BiodiversityHeritageLibrary! 🎂🥳
This week, GBIF Executive Secretary Joe Miller is at the Natural History Museum, #London celebrating #BHLDay2026.
The public symposium celebrates the incredible collaboration of libraries, museums, herbaria and research institutions around the world to deliver open access to biodiversity knowledge. It also reviews and reflects on future opportunities for BHL to further integrate into the bioinformatics data environment. 📖
1) An un-be-leaf-able🍃 new vegetation dataset just landed in GBIF!
The Czech Vegetation Database is an open digital archive of vegetation-plot records from the Czech Republic.
It includes records of plant species composition and cover-abundances in delimited plots within relatively homogeneous vegetation patches from vegetation surveys, monitoring programs and ecological studies.🍄
📸 Snaps from day 2 at #BioMonWeek!
🔍 Have a question about accessing data through GBIF?
🗺️ Curious about publishing survey and monitoring data?
🍄🐛🐊Generally up for a chat about fungi, insects, reptiles or another taxa?
You've come to the right place! Find the team at the GBIF booth
🚀 #rgbif 3.8.5 ➡️New release!
Explore new functions for accessing GBIF occurrence download statistics including:
🔹retrieving summarized download statistics
🔹exporting download summaries
🔹 getting downloads by user country
🔹getting downloaded records by dataset and more.
🐛 Additionally, multiple bug fixes and minor improvements are now also available through this release.
#BioMonWeek2026 has officially started! 🥳
The inaugural European biodiversity monitoring conference hosted in #Montpellier brings together hundreds of researchers, students, policymakers and industry professionals. 🌍
You can catch the GBIF and #B-Cubed team at our shared booth and presenting throughout the conference.
BioMonWeek is co-organized by @BiodiversaPlus@mas.to #AllianceForNature, #BioAgora, GBIF & #MARCOBOLO
💙🤍❤️ Bonjour from #Montpellier!
The GBIF Europe & Central Asia (ECA) nodes meeting is happening today, bringing together node managers from the region to discuss participation, collaboration, capacity building and infrastructure opportunities.
👀 Stay tuned this week for updates from #BioMonWeek2026 which is also happening in Montpellier!
✍️ Register to attend the online plenary sessions for #BioMonWeek26!
➡️ Explore the full programme and register: https://www.biodiversa.eu/2026/04/08/biomonweek2026/
The first livestreamed session is happening on Tuesday 5 May, 09:00-10:00 CEST featuring the keynote “Bridging Research and Policy: the state of art and future of biodiversity monitoring. ”
Register: 🔗 https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7Zi8jYJ6QHG8xfqNqsaAQA
💚BioMonWeek26 is co-organized by @BiodiversaPlus@mas.to, #AllianceForNature, #BioAgora GBIF & #MARCOBOLO
🚀 The 2026 Ebbe Nielsen Challenge is OPEN!
Have an idea, tool or prototype that uses GBIF biodiversity data to advance open science, research or policy? Submit it to GBIF’s annual Ebbe Nielsen Challenge and compete for a share of €20,000 in prizes 💸
⭐ Deadline: Friday 26 June 2026 (23:59 CEST)
👉 Learn more and submit your entries: https://gbif.link/ENC-2026
🦭 NOTICE: Dataset processing is current paws-ed on GBIF.org
Scheduled maintenance is currently in progress with dataset processing paused to allow infrastructure upgrades. We anticipate this will be complete by 29 April.
All other functions will remain operational and datasets can be registered ⭐
🌳Register for the upcoming Virtual Data Mobilization Workshop for Africa (English version)
Hosted by the GBIF Africa Regional Support Team, this training workshop is based on the GBIF Biodiversity Data Mobilization curriculum and will guide participants through key steps of the data mobilization workflow, including data capture, data management and data publishing.
📍Application close 31 May 2026
🎓The 2026 GBIF Graduate Researchers Award is open for nominations! This award celebrates innovative Master’s and PhD research powered by GBIF-mediated data, from mapping species distributions to advancing conservation and biodiversity informatics.
The award:
🏆 Two prizes of €5,000 for outstanding early-career researchers
🌱 Open to students currently studying in or holding citizenship from a GBIF Participant country
💚 Wrapping up the 2026 GBIF Midterms in #Copenhagen
This event brings together members of the Executive, Science and Budget Committees as well as the Nodes Steering Group and members of the Secretariat to discuss updates, progress and strategic priorities ahead of the Governing Board in September. 🦋
⛰️ Peak biodiversity monitoring
Between 2009 and 2013 researchers conducted one of Taiwan’s most comprehensive alpine biodiversity surveys on Syue Mountain.
Fieldwork surveyed areas in the Shei-Pa National Park, spanning 309 sampling sites across elevations from 2,140 to 3,886 m. 🌿🐦🦇
Records were verified and then mobilized via #TaiBIF to GBIF, providing comprehensive insight into long-term monitoring of alpine ecosystems and biodiversity change in the region.
💪Last week, a workshop in Lithuania hosted by #GBIFSweden and #NatureResearchCentre was delivered to increase capacity in biodiversity data management, standardization and publishing through GBIF. 💚
The event brought together 29 participants from several institutions across Lithuania and was delivered as part of a 2025 #CESP project. Workshop materials (including an adapted Pokémon data mapping training to work with DwC-A) are available for reuse.
Getting down to business 🤝
This week, the #GBIFZimbabwe node is hosting a workshop in Harare focused on #BusinessSector engagement and capacity building. It brings together colleagues from the Endangered Wildlife Trust, node staff from #GBIFMalawi and invited guests Ricardo Ortiz Gallego (#SiBColombia) and Niels Raes (#NLBIF).💚
This event is connected to the 2025 GBIF #CESP project, which aims to strengthen engagement with the private sector across Southern Africa. 🔗 https://gbif.link/CESP_ZW
🧬 GBIF advances eDNA data integration to support global research and decision-making
🌎 The #SPLICE project aims to transform eDNA data discovery and access while also bridging taxonomic gaps worldwide.
Developed alongside @DanBIF@biodiversity.social with the support of #NovoNordiskFoundation, SPLICE includes a Danish case study to support national monitoring efforts. 💚
☕ Grounds for concern, climate change reshapes coffee pollinator distributions across Latin America
A recent study used GBIF-mediated data to model future distributions of Arabica coffee and 39 bee species under multiple climate scenarios.
They predict major declines in suitable coffee-growing areas and bee richness, alongside shifts to higher elevations. Despite these changes, pollination services are likely to persist in many agricultural regions. 🐝
📣@tdwg@ecoevo.social 2026 Call for Abstracts deadline has been extended to 26 May 2026, 23:59 UTC-12.
This is the final call, submit your abstract now! 🏃♀️
Conference Theme 🤖: Research and Robot-ready Biodiversity Data Standards.
See you in #Oslo!
More info: 🔗 https://tdwg.link/call-for-abstracts
🚀 The 2026 Ebbe Nielsen Challenge is OPEN!
Have an idea, tool or prototype that uses GBIF biodiversity data to advance open science, research or policy? Submit it to GBIF’s annual Ebbe Nielsen Challenge and compete for a share of €20,000 in prizes 💸
⭐ Deadline: Friday 26 June 2026 (23:59 CEST)
👉 Learn more and submit your entries: https://gbif.link/ENC-2026
🎉 More than a dozen BID projects have been announced for Latin America and the Caribbean and the Pacific!
🐦 Projects in the LAC region are led by institutions in 11 countries and involve 111 collaborating institutions across 25 countries.
🌊 Projects in the Pacific are led by two institutions and involve 11 collaborating institutions across four countries.
✨ Last week, the GBIF Virtual Data Mobilization Workshop for Africa 2026 (French session) brought together >40 participants from 13 African countries!
The four-day workshop was organized by the Africa Regional Support Team and covered:
➖Biodiversity data mobilization foundations
➖Data capture and data structuring (#DarwinCore)
➖Data cleaning with OpenRefine
➖Data publishing through IPT and GBIF.
⭐ Applications for the English version are open until 31 May: https://gbif.link/Data-Mob-Wshop-Africa
🌊 Tis the sea-son for new datasets!
Six new eDNA datasets have been mobilized to GBIF from #NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration via @obis@mastodon.social
🧬DNA was extracted from seawater samples from expeditions across the Central North and Western North Atlantic, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Northeast Pacific between 2021-2023. Marine organisms were identified through eDNA metabarcoding, totaling 692,182 occurrences.
🌳Register for the upcoming Virtual Data Mobilization Workshop for Africa (English version)
Hosted by the GBIF Africa Regional Support Team, this training workshop is based on the GBIF Biodiversity Data Mobilization curriculum and will guide participants through key steps of the data mobilization workflow, including data capture, data management and data publishing.
📍Application close 31 May 2026
🚀Share your skills with the global biodiversity community!
🌏 Volunteers add nearly €1 million in expert value to the GBIF network annually, helping us bridge the gap in global biodiversity knowledge. Volunteers earn GBIF Digital Badges to formally recognize contributions to this vital work at the end of each calendar year.
🌻Explore opportunities for the following roles:
- Ambassador
- Mentor
- Translator
- GRSciColl editor
- Trainer
- Reviewer
🌺 Wrapping up activities in #Samoa this week with the GBIF Oceania Regional Nodes Meeting!
This meeting is led by Oceania representatives with the aim of facilitating regional collaboration, sharing node updates and feedback, and discussing collaborative opportunities through CESP, BID and other programs.
Read more about activities from the week: 🔗 https://gbif.link/SPREP-news
⭐ Participate in the upcoming @tdwg@ecoevo.social 2026 Working Sessions!
🗓 Sessions run between 11–22 May
🌍 Many groups will hold two sessions (East/West) to enable global participation
🎥 All sessions will be recorded and made available on the TDWG YouTube channel
💻 Registration is free, everyone is welcome!
@tdwg@ecoevo.social 2026: Call for abstracts 🎉
Deadline for submissions: 🗓️ 20 May 2026, 23:59 UTC-12.
You're invited to submit abstracts for presentations or posters at #TDWG2026 in Oslo, Norway, 21-25 September.
Submissions are encouraged to consider the conference theme: 🔬 & 🤖 Research and Robot-ready Biodiversity Data Standards.
🔗 https://www.tdwg.org/conferences/2026/submissions/call-for-abstracts/
💙🤍❤️ Le GBIF France lance une enquête auprès de ses partenaires et utilisateurs.
L’objectif est de faire un bilan des usages, des attentes et des besoins vis-à-vis des données et outils proposés par le GBIF.
⏰ Le temps de réponse est estimé entre 12 et 15 minutes, réponses souhaitées avant le 15 mai 2026.
💚 Atelier virtuel sur la mobilisation des données de biodiversité (français) – Afrique 2026
📍 Sessions virtuelles : 4 au 7 mai 2026 (08:00–11:00 UTC)
L’équipe GBIF Africa Regional Support organise un atelier virtuel de formation sur la mobilisation des données de biodiversité, destiné à renforcer les capacités des institutions francophones en Afrique à mobiliser, gérer et publier leurs données via le réseau GBIF.
Why #BioMonWeek26?
Biodiversity monitoring in Europe connects the community to collaborate and drive impact. #BioMonWeek offers a space to exchange ideas and align on key challenges.
ℹ️ www.biomonweek.eu
@BiodiversaPlus@mas.to #AllianceForNature #BioAgora #GBIF #MarcoBolo