33 funding organisations from 23 countries will fund research teams under the second call of Biodiversa+ on “Improved Transnational Monitoring of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Change for Science and Society (BiodivMon)”

The BiodivMon call funds 3-year transnational research projects and is co-funded by the European Commission. It addresses the following (non-exclusive) themes:

• Innovation and harmonisation of methods and tools for collection and management of bio-diversity monitoring data
• Addressing knowledge gaps on biodiversity status, dynamics and trends to reverse biodiversity loss
• Making use of available biodiversity monitoring data

The call had a remarkable response, receiving 262 pre-proposals and 108 eligible proposals. Based on the evaluation of an international Evaluation Committee, 33 academically excellent projects were selected for funding, representing a total funding amount of over €46 million (including funding from the European Commission). These projects are mobilising a wide range of disciplines, engaging many relevant stakeholders and addressing various pressing scientific and societal issues. 

Researchers from Germany participate in 24 of the funded projects. The DFG is co-funding twelve of these projects:

• BioMonI: Biodiversity monitoring of island ecosystems (DE, AT, PT, CH, FR, ES, TR, PL, CZ, NO, SK)
• DNAquaIMG: Innovating transnational aquatic biodiversity monitoring using high-throughput DNA tools and automated image recognition (DE, DK, AT, FI, FR, PL, IE, PT, CZ, RS, SE)
• GINAMO: Genetic Indicators for NAture MOnitoring (DK, SE, BE, DE, NO, FR, IT, US)
• GRASS4FUN: Monitoring the contribution of European grasslands to the conservation of soil biodiversity and ecosystem function under multiple global change stressors (ES, DE, CH, NL, FR, PT)
• IMPACT: Integrated Monitoring of PArasites in Changing EnvironmenTs (NO, DE, CH, IE, NL, ES, CZ)
• METAPLANTCODE: Harmonising plant metabarcoding pipelines in Europe to support monitoring activities in the field of plants and their functional organismic networks (DE, SE, NO, CH, NL, PT, FR, RO, GR, BE)
• MonitAnt: Developing a European-level Monitoring strategy for mound-building Formica Ants and symbiont communities residing in nest mounds (DE, UK, IT, CZ, RO, FI, BE)
• MoSTFun: Monitoring Strategies and Tools to address knowledge gaps on aquatic Fungal biodiversity (CH, CA, IT, DE, SE, NO, ES, EE, US)
• MOTIVATE: Monitoring Of Terrestrial habitats by Integrating Vegetation Archive Time series in Europe (DE, AT, ES, IT, CZ, FI)
• SEAGHOSTS: The global spatial ecology and conservation of the world’s smallest and elusive seabirds, the storm petrel (Hydrobatidae & Oceanitidae), across the Mediterranean and the North East Atlantic Ocean (ES, DK, DE, ES, PT, GR, NO, IT, IS, FR, IE, US)
• SEPPI: Standardised European monitoring of plant-pollinator interactions (DE, BE, CZ, FI, HU, IT, RO, LV)
• WildINTEL: Building a scalable WILDlife monitoring system by integrating remote camera sampling and artificial INTELligence with Essential Biodiversity Variables (PL, US, ES, NO, DE)

The full list of projects funded under the BiodivMon call, the 33 funding organisations from 23 countries which fund one or several research teams in this joint call and the list of the Evaluation Committee members are available on the Biodiversa+ website (see link below). 

This BiodivMon call is the second one out of six or seven joint calls Biodiversa+ intends to launch within the seven years of its EU funding. Biodiversa+, a network of agencies and ministries programming and funding pan-European research on biodiversity and ecosystem services, is a European co-funded partnership under Horizon Europe and started on 1 October 2021. 

Information on past, open and upcoming Biodiversa+ calls, including tools for researchers for successful application in Biodiversa+ calls, as well as general resources provided by Biodiversa+ are available on the Biodiversa+ website.

Further Information

Biodiversa+ website:

• www.biodiversa.eu

List of all funded projects of the call:

• www.biodiversa.eu/2022/10/07/2022-2023-joint-call