Impact

Impact

TETTRIs aims to leverage a greater impact

The availability of taxonomic knowledge and expertise is fundamental to understanding biodiversity and taking the measures to conserve and restore it. TETTRIs supports the Green Deal, and new European biodiversity governance framework and decision-making processes, as foreseen by the Biodiversity Strategy 2030. TETTRIs uniquely contributes to this scope and overall impact by focusing on developing knowledge and systems through building on existing reliable structures, implementing innovation, and enabling and incentivising external stakeholders to participate in the process.

Impact 1: Open access to up-to-date and reliable taxonomic knowledge, methods, and tools to support the Green Deal and the Biodiversity Strategy 2030

Impact 2: Awareness and literate participation of citizen scientists in the co-creation of scientific outputs for the protection of biodiversity 

Impact 3: Integration of taxonomic science in education, governance, and industry to support decision making and ensure long-term relevance of taxonomy as instrumental science for biodiversity

Achieving the project vision by 2026

The realisation of the project outcomes and impacts will culminate in an expanded capacity in taxonomy, allowing further innovative and sustainable development of this discipline. This vision aligns well with one of the major foreseen impacts defined in cluster 6: ‘Biodiversity is back on a path to recovery, and ecosystems and their services are preserved and sustainably restored on land, inland water and at sea through improved knowledge and innovation’. The current destination topic ‘Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’ has further specified a scope relating to this impact, which includes ‘Enabling transformative change in biodiversity’. The availability of taxonomic knowledge and expertise is fundamental to understanding biodiversity and taking the measures to conserve and restore it. The project will thus support the Green Deal, new European biodiversity governance framework and decision-making at all levels, as foreseen by the Biodiversity Strategy 2030. The current project uniquely contributes to this scope and overall impact by focusing on developing knowledge and systems through building on existing reliable structures, implementing innovation, and enabling and incentivising external stakeholders to participate in the process.

Expected outcomes and impacts

To achieve the expected outcomes and make a major contribution to “Biodiversity and ecosystem services: Biodiversity is back on a path to recovery, and ecosystems and their services are preserved and sustainably restored on land, inland water and at sea through improved knowledge and innovation”, 3 pathways are established 

  1. PATHWAY 1: DEVELOPMENT OF KNOWLEDGE
  2. PATHWAY 2: DEVELOPMENT OF SYSTEMS
  3. PATHWAY 3: BOOSTING IMPACT AND SUSTAINABILITY

The three pathways to reach the expected outcomes

Pathways 1 and 2 towards achieving outcomes and impact are directly built on pillars 1 (Knowledge) and 2 (Systems), while Pathway 3 acts to ensure and boost sustainability and impact and anchors on the connecting streams 1 (Validation) and 2 (Supports).
A comprehensive and accessible overview of available expertise in the field of taxonomy is created, providing high level comprehensive understanding of the state-of-the-art on which future efforts can build. The overall taxonomic capacity will be enhanced and referred to a stable, structured, and sustainable system.
By streamlining the EU-Nomen process, mapping and subsequently linking local taxonomies into the Taxonomic Resolution Engine (TRE), a major increase in efficiency is created for referring to local taxonomies, which allows for enlarged and cumulative capacity in the field.
By designing and building a novel framework for open (access to) partly digitised reference collections, the overall taxonomic research capacity is expanded. Through validation of this large framework TETTRIs will provide universal (local and central) access to a large knowledge repository to increase research capacity.
A virtual reference collection of pollinators will be created using data gathered during validation activities in WP7. This will produce novel knowledge with all parties involved, increasing local knowledge, creating an (inter)national reference collection and increasing research capacity.
During validation activities, new knowledge is created by performing taxonomic work. Simultaneously, through the training activities, new capacity in the field is created by increasing expertise in trainees. This will lead to creation and improvement of taxonomic research capacity near biodiversity hotspots and protected areas.
Through development and validation of innovative tools, adoption of new technologies is advanced, particularly with stakeholders in biodiverse regions, and innovation in taxonomy is boosted. This increases taxonomic research capacity in Europe and supports integration of different biodiversity data classes.
The creation of training and academic education and graduation opportunities will foster employability and maximise societal impact of taxonomy. Furthermore, the European Agency of Taxonomy will serve as a forum for interlinking taxonomic facilities with policy makers and funding agencies and inform decision makers about the role of taxonomy in society and its necessity in Europe’s efforts to overcome the biodiversity crisis. Combined, these activities allow for widespread recognition and further adoption of taxonomy as a basic science, offer career options to taxonomists and thereby create sustainability of the project results.
By collaborating with citizen scientists in the 3PP, citizen awareness and knowledge will increase. Additionally, through participation in the community implementation board these actors are empowered to significantly contribute to dissemination and exploitation of project results, to drive knowledge and research capacity.
All relevant stakeholders to TETTRIs will become aware of the project’s activities regarding taxonomic data, tools, methods and knowledge, and their impact on the field via dissemination, exploitation, and communication actions. This knowledge sharing pipeline will result in more widespread acknowledgement and adoption of the project results. By creating the Community Implementation Board (CIB) with representatives from major stakeholders, a wide reach and amplifying repercussions via each connected representative is enabled. Additionally, the CETAF consortium provides strong networks of leading taxonomic institutions that enable further dissemination of results.

... and how those outcomes can produce impact beyond 2030

TETTRIs’ impact will contribute to the EU Green Deal, by bridging science and society in several distinct ways, from reducing existing shortage of capacities in the field to bringing efficiencies in the use of resources closer to local management actors. TETTRIs will equally support achievements of the Biodiversity Strategy 2030, with better and innovative monitoring capacities, references and performance that will lead to positive and scientifically supported actions to preserve and restore biodiversity and ensure reverting decline trends in threatened areas. As the project will create a positive feedback loop in building taxonomic research capacity, TETTRIs aims to also create impact beyond the current environment-related frameworks and expand its influence over other related disciplines (e.g., education, agriculture) through career development initiatives and knowledge transfer mechanisms.​
Increasing the integration of citizen scientists in the field of taxonomy is crucial, as their involvement is instrumental to study and protect biological diversity throughout Europe in the coming years. Citizen scientists complement the work of professionals and accelerate the species discovery/description rate, contribute to biodiversity monitoring, widen the scope of preservation actions, and thus, their ultimate impact on tackling biodiversity loss. The outcomes relating to this impact are therefore focused on capacity building through validation of training pilots and developing educational opportunities.
By encouraging students and other interested users to develop novel expertise and build careers related to taxonomy, significant impact is created through capacity increase. The taxonomy field will be widely recognised by citizen scientists, governmental bodies, researchers, educators, and the remaining scientific community as a basic science to understand, manage and eventually improve biodiversity preservation. It will lead to 1) awareness of the available resources and their respective value proposition to the stakeholder’s field, 2) adoption of resources, and further 3) participation in creating and/or co-developing resources.

Knowledge

State of the art

Reference collections serve scientific research, support the identification of species, allow for the education of a new generation of experts, are source material for innovative research, and, when combined with broader natural history collections, help to assess anthropogenic impacts on biodiversity. Reference collections are currently located in museums and/or botanic gardens and can contain millions of specimens. Access to these collections is mainly restricted to physical visits and a complete awareness of the number and composition of such repositories is often not complete. Digitisation efforts on reference collections are ongoing but knowledge sharing is still limited.
Technology evolution drives the need for increasingly specialised and up-to-date staff. Specialised training and courses are available at many natural history museums and botanic gardens, and projects and initiatives in taxonomy that offer training resources include NATURAL EUROPE, BIOTALENT, DEST, SYNTHESYS +, VIRTUAL PATHWAYS, Global Taxonomy Initiative and GBIF. However, an overview of available course material for trainees is lacking, limiting efficiency in the training of both professionals and non-professionals. In particular, people working in biodiversity areas often face a geographical barrier in accessing collections and skilled trainers.Taxonomy Initiative and GBIF. However, an overview of available course material for trainees is lacking, limiting efficiency in the training of both professionals and non-professionals. In particular, people working in biodiversity areas often face a geographical barrier in accessing collections and skilled trainers.
At the forefront of technological developments are molecular and bioinformatics tools used for species discovery, delimitation and identification, such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). TETTRIs will utilise machine learning for species recognition from images and sounds. Such technologies create and process large datasets that hold promise for knowledge creation. As interpretation and management of the data require specialised training, which is not yet available across the whole field, it is important to focus efforts on building the capacity to address this issue

Beyond the State of the Art Knowledge

National reference collections in Europe will be redefined (WP1). The main innovation lies in the creation of overarching blueprints which interconnect digitised reference collections for global access and knowledge sharing. The blueprint for physical and virtual collections will be created based on end-user needs and optimised access. Connection of national reference collections to DiSSCo and global data integration with GBIF will enable taxonomists to co- operate on global biodiversity synthesis and use “big data” to (i) create quality research results with high impact; (ii) increase research efficiency, and (iii) improve taxonomic research applicability in practice
TETTRIs (WP4) will collect existing training resources (e.g., training packages, toolkits), to build a digital training knowledge database, with resources that have already been implemented, tested, validated, and standardised in different capacity building processes. Access will be provided to the three target groups of trainees. Taxonomists who have the skills and capability to train will be involved and will form a “multiplier task force”. The innovative learning methodology is based on Inquiry Based Learning (IBL) and Resource-Based Learning (RBL). These methodologies are student-based and not teacher-based
Innovative tools and methods will be leveraged to advance knowledge and technology (WP6). Tools will include AI-based Application Programming Interface (API) for species identification and molecular tools for species delimitation. Innovative methods include molecular methods used by professionals and specimen identification and annotation methods employed by both professionals and the public. These tools and methods will be made accessible by creating user- friendly interfaces and instructions to allow widespread adoption of innovative knowledge-creating techniques

Systems

State of the art

Taxonomic data often lacks standardisation, is fragmented and not universally available. This results in misunderstandings regarding the taxonomic identity of organisms and/or unreliable/insufficient datasets that are needed for biodiversity monitoring and validation of conservation measures. Efforts for integration are made on the level of collections via DiSSCo and at the level of taxa (e.g. Catalogue of Life (COL) (11), World Flora Online (12), Unified Taxonomic Information Service (UTIS), and Pan-European Species directories Infrastructure (PESI, also known as EU-Nomen) (13)). However, these resources need to continuously integrate work done by the taxonomic community to constitute a reliable, comprehensive and updated source
Expertise and services are currently accessible mostly locally. As the field appreciates the need for increased access to shared expertise and services, several initiatives are under construction to provide online access to available resources. The most prominent development is DiSSCo initiated and executed by a subset of the current consortium where access to specimens will be centralised. As this is still under development and not yet publicly available, current access to expertise and services is still reliant on networking activities
The products derived from taxonomic research and taxonomy expertise – such as floras, faunas, checklists and the capability to discover, describe and identify species – are needed in many sectors of society. With accelerating species decline, this need becomes more and more urgent. However, there are only a few universities that teach taxonomic courses, and if they do, these are often auxiliary to other disciplines, such as ecology. Dedicated programmes to educate taxonomists are scarce and career paths outside scientific institutions are mostly missing

Beyond the State of the Art Knowledge

With TETTRIs (WP2) taxonomic data will be identified and mapped against each other by establishing a wiki- base format device called the Taxonomic Resolution Engine (TRE), that will allow linkage between different taxonomic resources. It will further allow management of all taxon-based information. Taxonomic backbone will be better connected to facilitate knowledge exchange and provide access to resources and data. Harmonised access to all taxonomic data will provide a solid base for further research on biodiversity topics, for biodiversity monitoring and facilitating larger public engagement. Similarly, it will constitute a valuable resource for informed decision-making processes at all levels. Special added value will be generated for monitoring processes and progress measuring (e.g., towards CBD goals achievement, compliance with the Nagoya Protocol and Benefit-Sharing policies implementation).
Expertise and services are centralised in the taxonomic marketplace to address the fragmented landscape of services facilitating the discovery, development and application of taxonomic knowledge. This action will also enable connectivity among researchers and provide useful information on expertise availability. The marketplace will be transferred to the CETAF community by its integration into the DiSSCo Research infrastructure, and linked via the TRE to ensure its update, enlargement, improvement, and sustainability
TETTRIs addresses the shortage of taxonomists from the supply as well as from the demand side in an interactive process: Stakeholders in need of taxonomic knowledge will voice their requirements with respect to future candidates for employment, and universities (WP5) and other non-formal education centres (WP1, 4, 6) will be approached to provide courses, curricula and programmes tailored to these needs. To explore mechanisms to fund taxonomic work in different sectors of society, the business case for a European Agency for Taxonomy, run under the umbrella of CETAF, will be outlined.