Tag: students

Ten remarkable new marine species from 2022

As for previous years, the World Register of Marine Species, WoRMS (hosted by VLIZ, focal point of LifeWatch Belgium), has again released its annual list of the top-ten marine species described by researchers during the past year to coincide with World Taxonomist Appreciation Day on 19 March!

If you were unaware of this celebration of all the work that taxonomists do, you can find more here and here.

Every day in labs, museums, and out on fieldwork, taxonomists are busy collecting, cataloguing, identifying, comparing, describing, and naming species new to science. Some 300 taxonomists globally also contribute their valuable time to keeping the World Register of Marine Species up to date. Today is a chance for those at WoRMS to thank their taxonomic editors for this important task. Let’s celebrate the work of taxonomists now with the WoRMS list of the top-ten marine species described in 2022 as nominated and voted for by taxonomists, journal editors and WoRMS users!

This top-ten list is just a small highlight of about 2,000 fascinating new marine species discovered every year (there were almost 1,700 marine species described in 2022 and added to WoRMS, including some 300 fossil species). Here is the top-ten:

How were the species chosen?

A call for nominations was announced in December 2022, sent to all editors of WoRMS and editors of major taxonomy journals, and posted openly on the WoRMS website and social media so anyone had the opportunity to nominate their favorite marine species. Nominated species must have been described between 1 January and December 31st, 2022, and have come from the marine environment (including fossil taxa). A small committee of volunteers (including both taxonomists and data managers) was brought together to decide upon the final candidates. The list is in no hierarchical order.

The final decisions reflect the immense diversity of animal groups in the marine environment (including crustaceans, corals, sponges, jellies and worms) and highlight some of the challenges facing the marine environment today. The final candidates also feature some particularly astonishing marine creatures, notable for their interest to both science and the public.

Each of these marine animals has a story. This year the chosen species cover the weird, the bewildering and the astonishing! We feature, amongst others, the cute-looking Fluffy Sponge Crab, the Japanese Retweet Mite (remember the Japanese Twitter Mite from the Top Ten 2021?), the mysterious King Ghidorah’s Branching Worm, the illustrious Satan’s Mud Dragon, and the 35 million year old Ballerina Sponge.

Image credit: Colin McLay and Western Australian Museum

This article was originally posted on the website of LifeWatch Belgium.

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Voices of Women at LifeWatch ERIC for International Women’s Day

In preparation for this year’s International Women’s Day, LifeWatch ERIC International Gender Officer, Africa Zanella, had a clear request: amplify women’s voices. As explored in the “Gender, Equity and Research” campaign for last year’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science, statistically, we know that while more women than ever are getting involved in STEM, there are significant obstacles still to overcome for women in research.

In light of International Women’s Day 2023, we have therefore created a podcast miniseries specifically dedicated to learning more about authentic experiences of women working in LifeWatch ERIC fields of interest. We asked scientists from our eight member states to talk candidly about their work and experience. The guests were invited to speak in pairs, which produced spontaneous and insightful conversations on these topics, facilitated by LifeWatch ERIC podcast host, Julian Kenny. Being of all ages and hailing from a diversity of backgrounds, the end result produced is an enriching range of experiences and contemporary points of view of women working in research today. Listening to their voices, our eyes are opened to their contribution to society, to science, and the potential offered by the European Union’s Gender Equality Strategy, which LifeWatch ERIC actively supports and incorporates into its everyday work life.

The guests featured in “Voices of Women” are:

The episodes will be released over the course of the week beginning 6 March and will be consolidated with an overview and considerations from LifeWatch ERIC International Gender Officer, Africa Zanella, interviewed by Chief Communication Officer, Sara Montinaro, to be released on 8 March (International Women’s Day). This podcast will examine the progress of the infrastructure as a whole in terms of achieving gender sustainability and equity, a year on from the appointment of LifeWatch ERIC’s International Gender Officer, and explore future plans to continue the commendable and tangible work that she has already set in motion.

The podcasts are available here below. They can also be found on Spotify, Google, Apple, and Amazon.

EU Commissioner for Innovation visits LifeWatch Bulgaria’s Agricultural University – Plovdiv

Last week, the LifeWatch Bulgaria consortium representative, the Agricultural University – Plovdiv, was thrilled to welcome the European Commissioner for Innovation, Scientific Research, Culture, Education and Youth, Mariya Gabriel, to its premises. The Commissioner held a meeting with students, teachers, innovators, young scientists, representatives of the European Institute for Innovation and Technology in Food (EIT Food) and citizens of Plovdiv on the theme of “Innovation and education – building synergy for better opportunities”.

In the European University Strategy, the leading initiative is the European University Alliances and their acquisition of status; there are currently 44 alliances, and the goal is for them to grow to 60 by 2024. Behind the 44 alliances are 340 universities from 31 countries and 1,300 partners: non-governmental organisations, local authorities, enterprises, noted Gabriel.

The Innovation Commissioner went on to underline that there is a difference between regions and member states in terms of science and innovation. Europe’s goal is to form 100 regional innovation consortia/hubs to connect and work towards a pan-European innovation system. For 70% of all companies in Europe, the first hurdle to growing businesses and investing in each location is finding people with knowledge, Gabriel said. According to her, the role of universities is to become a driving force. Plovdiv, she said, is a shining example for Europe because of the many innovative local ecosystems. It has set a goal of having 1,000,000 tech talents by 2025. “Europe needs investment in people with skills and talents in technology, for which I want to congratulate this wonderful university, which educates and develops the talents of future leaders in these fields every day” she commented.

The rector of the Agricultural University-Plovdiv, Professor Hristina Yancheva, drew attention to the fact that the university is a partner in the UNIgreen European University Alliance, and explained that the alliance is the first project in Europe for a “green” European university in agronomy, biotechnology, and natural sciences. As an excellent model for cooperation in the field of science, the rector highlighted the university’s membership and collaborative work of the LifeWatch Bulgaria consortium, which has been part of LifeWatch ERIC since the beginning of 2022.

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LifeWatch ERIC Wins Prize at AI for Science Workshop

The AI for Science Workshop was held from 12–16 December in Rabat, Morocco, organised by NASSMA, MASCIR, and the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. Artificial Intelligence offers the promise of revolutionising the way scientific discoveries are done, and tremendously accelerate their pace. However, major challenges still remain in this nascent field of AI for Science, and the goal of this workshop was to address and discuss challenges such as novel methods for AI for Science, tackling the right set of scientific problems, enabling scientific discoveries with AI, and the journey from scientific discovery to a practical application.

LifeWatch ERIC was represented at the event by its Data Science & Artificial Intelligence Assistant, Yassir Benhammou, who exhibited the ERDF-funded SmartEcoMountains project, which combines interdisciplinary perspectives to obtain and integrate data on how global change affects mountain ecosystems. He displayed a poster on the project “Satellite RGB images and Time Series datasets for automatic Global Land Use/Cover mapping using Deep Learning”, presenting two Smart Global datasets, TimeSpec4LULC* and Sentinel2GlobalLULC**, to train Machine Learning models to perform land use/cover mapping. These two datasets are published in two renowned journals: Earth System Science Data (IF-2021=11,81) and Scientific Data (IF-2021=8,5). On the final day of the event, it won the “best poster prize”. LifeWatch ERIC is delighted and honoured by the recognition afforded by the panel, which featured representatives of pioneers in AI such as UM6P, DeepMind, University of Cambridge, the Morrocan Foundation for Advanced Science, Innovation and Research and Google.

For more information on projects in which the infrastructure is involved, please see our related projects page.

*Authors of TimeSpec4LULC: Rohaifa Khaldi, Domingo Alcaraz-Segura, Emilio Guirado, Yassir Benhammou, Abdellatif El Afia, Francisco Herrera, Siham Tabik. Article link: https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/1377/2022/

**Authors of Sentinel2GlobalLULC: Yassir Benhammou, Domingo Alcaraz-Segura, Emilio Guirado, Rohaifa Khaldi, Boujemâa Achchab, Francisco Herrera, Siham Tabik. Article link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01775-8

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Fostering Innovation with the European Commission and Universities for Regional Development

On Friday 2 December, European experts debated in the Auditorium of the University of Seville about the contribution of the university to regional development and how the promotion of innovation can benefit the double ecological and digital transition. The seminar, organised by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission and the universities of Seville and Pablo de Olavide, served as a stage for the exchange of knowledge on how the connection between universities and the other actors in the innovation system is essential to tackle challenges such as climate change, digitisation or water scarcity.

The Minister of University, Research and Innovation of the Junta de Andalucía, José Carlos Gómez Villamandos; the director of the JRC in Seville, Mikel Landabaso; and the rectors of the University of Seville and the Pablo de Olavide University, Miguel Ángel Castro Arroyo and Francisco Oliva Blázquez, participated in the seminar called ‘The contribution of the university to regional development through the promotion of innovation’.

In particular, examples were analysed of how collaboration between companies and universities is a characteristic of the most advanced regions in terms of innovation and job creation. In addition, the role of universities in the implementation of regional economic transformation strategies was discussed. For this, experts intervened such as Francisco Solé, vice president of the CYD Foundation; Luc Soete, former Chancellor of Maastricht University and co-chair of the S4 Scientific Commission; Koen Jonkers, editor-in-chief of the JRC; Karel Haegeman, team leader at JRC; Johan Stierna, JRC Lead Scientist; Antonia Jiménez, Vice-Rector for Research, Transfer and Doctorate at the Pablo de Olavide University, and Felipe Rosa, Vice-Rector for Knowledge Transfer at the University of Seville.

LifeWatch ERIC, which sets an example of promoting innovation through agreements with research centres and universities inside and outside Europe, attended this seminar. Juan Miguel González Aranda, LifeWatch ERIC Chief Technology Officer and Common Facility in Spain-ICT Core Director, reached out to the heads of the JRC and the main universities in Seville to expand cooperation in projects already underway.

The Councillor for University, Research and Innovation of the Junta de Andalucía, José Carlos Gómez Villamandos, highlighted that “the innovative capacity of academic institutions is linked to the flow of knowledge that they transmit to the business sector, and the degree of disruption that is implicit”. As an example of this, the Minister highlighted the Andalusia-Alentejo-Algarve University Innovation Centre CIU3A: a cross-border project promoted by the University of Seville, together with Portuguese higher education institutions, which will make it possible to take advantage of the opportunities associated with collaboration between the universities of both countries and to create international environments for R+D+I.

Miguel Ángel Castro, rector of the University of Seville, has stressed that “although much progress has been made in recent years, it is necessary to establish more synergies between the universities and other actors in the regional ecosystems to promote the innovation necessary for the profound transformation of regional production and consumption systems”. He has also referred to the European Universities initiative launched by the European Commission, in which the University of Seville is represented through Ulysseus European University. Castro recalled that this programme is being developed in parallel to the new European Innovation Agenda, is the aim of which is “to promote innovation as the engine of the ecological and digital transitions that Europe needs”.

Francisco Oliva, rector of the Pablo de Olavide University, expressed his admiration for “the important contribution that universities make to the social, cultural and economic development of our environment”; highlighting that “in the face of the challenges that society faces regarding digitisation and the ecological transition, universities contribute knowledge and act as transformative agents, generating alliances for innovation and training future generations”.

In the photo, from left to right: Mikel Landabaso, director of the JRC in Seville; Vincenzo Cardarelli, head of institutional relations at the JRC in Seville; Juan Miguel González-Aranda, LifeWatch ERIC Chief Technology Officer and Common Facility in Spain-ICT Core Director; Miguel Angel Castro Arroyo, rector of the University of Seville; Francisco Oliva, Blázquez, rector of the Pablo de Olavide University; Carmen Vargas, Vice Chancellor for Internationalisation at the University of Seville; Amapola Povedano, General Director of Employability and Entrepreneurship at the Pablo de Olavide University, and Francisco Solé Parellada, Vice President of the Knowledge and Development Foundation.

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Celebrating 15 Years of WoRMS

In 2007, the digitally available European Register of Marine Species (ERMS) expanded into a World Register of Marine Species, et voila, WoRMS was born. WoRMS is hosted by VLIZ, which is the national focal point for LifeWatch Belgium. In 2022, WoRMS can be seen as the number one authoritative classification and catalogue of marine names.

WoRMS is managed by a small Data Management Team (DMT) and an elected Steering Committee (SC), but the actual driving force behind the high-quality content of WoRMS is the Editorial Board. Completing and correcting WoRMS requires an enormous effort and is entirely dependent on the expertise and time of the editors. On top of that, it is a race against time as species are at risk of disappearing due to changing environmental conditions such as warming, pollution and acidification, before they are discovered.

To celebrate its 15^th birthday and 15 years of collaboration with (taxonomic) experts all over the globe, WoRMS designed an exclusive t-shirt, with proceeds used to coordinate and disseminate funds to the WoRMS editors. With the funds raised, editors will be able to continue to fill gaps in coverage, expand the content and enhance the quality of taxonomic databases, attract interns and students to assist in the verification of taxonomic information, and purchase scientific literature.

And there’s more! Check out all the stories below on the LifeWatch Belgium website in celebration of 15 years of WoRMS!

2 – Get to know the WoRMS editors here!

3 – The growth of WoRMS over the years

4 – Developing the database

5 – Setting priorities to address gaps

6 – Behind the scenes

7 – Taxonomy – a science, an art, or a battleground?

8 – The challenge of author names

9 – Dark literature

10 – Type localities

11 – Endless possibilities

12 – Supporting the volunteers

13 – Beyond classical taxonomy

14 – Who uses WoRMS?

15 – Not reinventing the wheel

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LifeWatch ERIC at the International Conference on Ecological Sciences in Metz

The SFE2, GFÖ & EEF International Conference on Ecological Sciences is taking place in Metz this week, from 21–25 November, organised by the LIEC (University of Lorraine, CNRS) and other labs in northeastern France working in the fields of ecology and evolution. LifeWatch ERIC is not only there with a stand, but is contributing to the agenda with cutting-edge topics in the field of biodiversity– namely, Non-indigenous and Invasive Species (NIS), considered one of the major threats to ecosystem functioning and one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss.

The European Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research is putting on two events at the Conference on Ecological Sciences, a Workshop on 21 November to train scientists in the use of e-tools and resources to address key ecological questions on Non-indigenous and Invasive Species, and a Symposium on European Research Infrastructures (RIs).

The Workshop consists of a 4-hour training session in which interested attendees learn how to access and use LifeWatch ERIC Virtual Research Environments (VREs) from their personal computers, in which NIS case studies and workflows are embedded. The hands-on session is introduced by an interactive session to guide the attendees on their first approach to the VREs and related e-tools.

At the Symposium on 24 November, the discussion focuses on major scientific and societal challenges presented by biodiversity loss. Speakers are to present their RIs, then illustrate the services and facilities that these RIs can provide to address major threats for biodiversity (e.g., alien species, habitat degradation and fragmentation, etc.) and tackle climate change impacts affecting ecosystem functioning and services. It is therefore also an occasion to explore multidisciplinary expertise and synergies on these key topics.

Please follow the links for more information on the Workshop and the Symposium.

Researchers students

“The Blue Crab” Wins International Prix Italia Festival

Focused on sustainability, the 74^th edition of the international Rai Festival of radio, TV and web productions took place from 4 – 8 October in Bari in southern Italy. The short film, realised by the students of University of Salento DAMS Filmmaking Laboratory in collaboration with LifeWatch ERIC, centres on the Blue Crab, an alien species that is increasingly replacing native species and changing the balance of the marine ecosystems in Europe.

Readers familiar with LifeWatch ERIC’s work will know that it spent its first five years focused on five validation cases on Non-indigenous and Invasive species in the development of its Virtual Research Environment. Students from the University of Salento, host of the LifeWatch Italy node and LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre, chose one of these validation cases as the premise for their submission to the “Sustainability” category of the Prix Italia festival this year: the infamous Blue Crab (Callinectes sapidus).

This year’s theme being sustainability, students of the DAMS course quickly accepted Rai’s invitation to participate in the festival’s YLAB challenge, with a documentary made in collaboration with LifeWatch ERIC, the infrastructure’s Multimedia Production Centre and the Master’s course e-Biodiversity and Ecosystem Sciences (EBES). The short film centres on the Blue Crab, an alien species that is increasingly replacing native species and changing the balance of the marine ecosystem in Europe – a focus for research supported by LifeWatch ERIC. It was produced by the University of Salento DAMS Filmmaking Laboratory under the technical supervision of Emiliano Carico by students Martina Di Noi, Immacolata Parisi, Mirko Clemente, Gaia Pascali, Federica Gianfreda, Alessia Merico, Valentina Capone, Cosimo Micelli, Stefania Bocco and Giorgia Chirico.

The students’ creative efforts paid off during the award ceremony at the Kursaal Theatre on Friday 7 October, where “The Blue Crab” won the YLAB challenge prize! To learn more about the effects of the Blue Crab in Europe, read the paper published in the Biodiversity Data Journal “An individual-based dataset of carbon and nitrogen isotopic data of Callinectes sapidus in invaded Mediterranean waters”.

Following this success, DAMS student Mirko Clemente went to the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development (ASviS) Festival in Rome on Thursday 20 October to present the winning documentary in the session “Sustainability, Culture and Communication”. The aim of the Festival is to spread awareness about sustainability, make sustainable development a topical issue and draw national and local attention to the problems and opportunities related to the achievement of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda). The videos will soon also be broadcast on Sky.

Watch all the entries now on the LifeWatching Science Channel!

Il granchio blu (in Italian)

Our Earth, Our Home

Sonata breve (in Italian)

About the Prix Italia Festival

The 74^th edition of the annual international Festival of radio, TV e web productions took place, organised by the Italian channel Rai, from 4 – 8 October in Bari in southern Italy, with the title “Sustainable Me”. Founded in Capri in 1948, the festival grows in influence each year, with 13 new members participating in the Prix Italia for the first time in 2022, among these Public Service broadcasters of Algeria, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Cuba, Jordan, Peru and the territory of Kosovo. This time round, the productions entered in the shortlists came from 31 different broadcasters and 23 different countries. Sixty-for competing products were selected by 86 jurors from the 321 works presented: 155 television programmes, 94 radio and 72 web projects. More than just a competition, Prix Italia is a celebration of creativity, with the three days full of conferences, shows, webinars and masterclasses, presented by a variety of international talents and attended by representatives from the UN, the Executive Board EBU (European Broadcasting Union) alongside the most noteworthy European broadcasters.

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Second open access data paper published in the Biodiversity Data Journal

The “LifeWatch ERIC Collection of Data and Services Papers” published in the Biodiversity Data Journal is dedicated to the resources and assets developed, upgraded and used during the implementation of the Internal Joint Initiative (IJI), our flagship project focused non-indigenous and invasive species (NIS). Following the debut paper “An individual-based dataset of carbon and nitrogen isotopic data of Callinectes sapidus in invaded Mediterranean waters” (Di Muri et al.) in January, a second open-access data paper in this series was published on 20 October 2022, entitled “Individual and population-scale carbon and nitrogen isotopic values of Procambarus clarkii in invaded freshwater ecosystems” (Di Muri et al.).

Freshwater ecosystems are amongst the most threatened habitats on Earth; nevertheless, they support about 9.5% of known global biodiversity while covering less than 1% of the globe’s surface. One such threat are NIS such as the Louisiana crayfish, Procambarus clarkii. Crayfish species are widely-distributed freshwater invaders and, while alien species introductions occur mostly accidentally, alien crayfish are often released deliberately into new areas for commercial purposes. Native to the south United States and north Mexico, P. clarkii has been introduced in Europe, Asia and Africa, having negative impacts in the majority of invaded habitats where it became dominant, meaning it had become essential to evaluate the ecological consequences and quantify its impact.

The paper presents two geo-referenced datasets of isotopic signatures of the Louisiana crayfish and its animal and vegetable prey in invaded inland and brackish waters. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this effort represents the first attempt to collate in standardised datasets the sparse isotopic information of P. clarkii available in literature. The datasets provide a spatially explicit resolution of its trophic ecology and can be used to address a variety of ecological questions concerning its ecological impact on recipient aquatic food webs.

The research was carried out within the context of the IJI, more specifically the ‘Crustaceans Workflow’, one of the validation cases used to develop an interdisciplinary Virtual Research Environment that utilises disruptive technologies to deal with the impacts of NIS on native species, genetic diversity, habitats, ecosystem functioning and services, and to inform current practices in environmental management and policy implementation. Stay tuned for the next paper!

ACCESS THE PAPER HERE

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Serious Games for Students of Sustainability

Next month, LifeWatch Italy and DiSTeBA (the ecology laboratory of the University of Salento) will be taking part in the 31^st Conference of the Sea (XXXI Rassegna del mare) organised by Mareamico, an environmental protection and ecological agency. Together, they will be putting on an educational session for students aged 11–14, coordinated by Franca Sangiorgio of the LifeWatch Italy node. The Conference will take place in Gallipoli in the province of Lecce in southern Italy, and this year will revolve around the theme of ‘Safeguarding Biological Resources and the Blue Economy’. In order to increase their awareness and understanding of sustainability issues, the students will be involved in tournaments focused on marine ecosystem protection and sustainability. LifeWatch Italy has for many years been working on the creation and implementation of scientific content for so-called “serious game” competitions, using the Ecologicamente platform; the initiative aims to contribute to raising awareness of sustainability issues, so that future citizens will be more conscientious when it comes to the environment. All the students taking part in the competition will receive a participation certificate and the schools which perform the best will receive a prize.

You can find the full programme for the event on the Mareamico website.

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