Biodiversity and Ecosystem responses to Climate Change: scientists in Lecce discuss the invisible cost of the ecological crisis

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Responses

The international workshop “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change” took place on 12–13 June 2025 at MUST Museum in Lecce.

The National Biodiversity Future Centre (NBFC), Italy’s first national research and innovation centre for biodiversity, funded by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR) through NextGeneration EU funds, organised the workshop in collaboration with LifeWatch ERIC’s Working Group on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change.

Climate change is deeply altering the living conditions of organisms across the planet, influencing their geographic distribution, abundance, and even the daily cost of survival. These effects are especially severe for species which cannot regulate their body temperature and must expend more resources to maintain metabolism and behaviour in warmer, more unstable environments.

The consequences of these changes extend far beyond the ecological sphere. They impact key ecosystem functions that support human well-being, potentially affecting economic growth (GDP) and the achievement of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Acknowledging that climate change does not act in isolation but reshapes entire ecological contexts, the workshop focused on assessing possible ecological responses and exploring ways to integrate them into adaptation and mitigation strategies.

One of the central questions guiding the discussions was: How will biodiversity’s response to climate change affect our economy and society in the coming decades?
The reflection was based on a simple yet crucial premise: we cannot safeguard our well-being without first safeguarding the ecosystems we depend on.

The full programme remain available at:
https://www.lifewatch.eu/thematic-services-working-groups/wg-climate-change/meetings/workshop-biodiversity-and-ecosystem-responses-to-climate-change

Marine SABRES in Fairs – at FIMAR 2025

Marine Sabres in FAIRS FIMAR

On June 6-8 2025, LifeWatch ERIC and ULPGC-ECOAQUA (University Institute for Research in Sustainable Aquaculture and Marine Ecosystems) will co-organise one of the “Marine SABRES in Fairs” series events, at FIMAR 2025, La Feria Internacional del Mar (International Sea Fair).

This year’s edition of FIMAR focuses on the sustainability of the Canary islands’ coastal border: an important event for the nautical and marine-maritime sector of the Canary Islands archipelago organised by the Cabildo de Gran Canaria, the City Council of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the Port Authority of Las Palmas, Ciudad de Mar Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Infecar Feria de Gran Canaria.
FIMAR is, in fact, a key opportunity for companies and professionals, as well as a great chance for marine and coastal researchers and experts to communicate the importance of these ecosystems to the general public.

The last edition counted more than 10,000-15,000 visitors, mainly citizens from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, but also tourists and people from other regions of Spain and Europe.

LifeWatch ERIC and ULPGC-ECOAQUA will contribute to the programme and engage with its participants at their exhibition booth. The initiative will highlight the activities carried out in the Macaronesia DA in the framework of the project Marine SABRES, with a special focus on the marine biological corridor between the Azores, Madeira and Canary archipelagos, as well as ecotourism best practices that partners aimed to promote in this area to foster a sustainable blue economy.
Researchers of the ECOAQUA-ULPGC team will get a chance to show Macaronesian rich biodiversity and valuable marine ecosystems in the Canary Islands through samples and other materials.

The team will also get a chance to share the videos realised by the LifeWatch Italy Multimedia Production Centre in the framework of Marine SABRES documentary activities; research aims and results achieved so far will be also presented with the help of a project brochure and a poster.

For more information about the project, visit Marine SABRES official website:
www.marinesabres.eu

Watch our documentary trailers on LifeWatching YouTube Channel and WebTV platform:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyXexZtV6trRxFOOO7EvgIPUQ3lhwXD9Y
https://www.lifewatching.tv/tv-show/marine-sabres/

Further details about the event can be found on the official website:
https://feriainternacionaldelmar.com/

Noise pollution in the North Sea: Marine Environment Service and DG Shipping launch awareness campaign supported by LifeWatch VLIZ

The North Sea is one of the busiest seas in the world. All this human activity creates a lot of noise underwater, that can have harmful consequences for marine mammals and other organisms. This noise pollution originates primarily through shipping, explosive ordnance disposal, sonar, the construction of wind farms, and sand extraction and dredging.

The Marine Environment Service (FPS Public Health) and the Shipping Directorate-General (FPS Mobility), with the support of LifeWatch Belgium (VLIZ), are collaborating on a campaign to raise awareness about underwater noise pollution among the wider public and promote measures, that fortunately exist, to limit noise pollution.

This is a very important objective: for many marine species, such as marine mammals, fish, and even invertebrates, hearing is a crucial sense to survive in the dark underwater environment. Sound waves help these species perform vital functions such as orientation, communication, finding food and reproduction.

In addition, they propagate much more efficiently underwater than in the air, as they are less attenuated and move up to five times faster, posing a real threat to the marine wildlife in the Northern Sea.

The campaign is part of the OSPAR Convention collective actions to reduce noise pollution, that include the application of measures such as improved ship design, reduced vessel speed, a bubble curtain during pile driving, or the gradual startup of sonar devices or machinery used for pile driving.

VLIZ, the Flanders Marine Institute, is contributing to this plan with the help of LifeWatch Belgium and currently developing a library of long-term underwater sounds from the North Sea, set to launch in the summer of 2025. Well-described sound events will be ingested by the library and available according to the FAIR data principles.

Want to learn more? Read the full article on LifeWatch Belgium: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/noise-pollution-north-sea or visit the SoundLib website.

Biodiversity and Ecosystem eScience and the Triple Planetary Crisis: the LifeWatch ERIC Community meets in Heraklion at BEeS 2025!

The BEeS Conference 2025 is approaching! From 30 June to 3 July, Heraklion, Crete, will host the 2025 edition of the Biodiversity and Ecosystem eScience Conference (BEeS), LifeWatch ERIC’s flagship event, hosted this year by the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) and the Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture (IMBBC). The event will gather researchers, policy-makers and ecosystem experts to discuss some of today’s most urgent global challenges.

Under the overarching theme of the Triple Planetary Crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution), BEeS 2025 will explore how eScience and European Research Infrastructures (RIs) can contribute to understanding and addressing its complex impacts.

This year, contributions have been structured around six thematic areas, reflecting the priorities identified by LifeWatch ERIC in collaboration with its National Distributed Centres, and coordinated by the corresponding Thematic Services Working Groups:

  • Biodiversity & Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change
  • Mapping Life on Planet Earth: Biogeography in a Changing World
  • Taxonomy: Identifying the Units of Diversity in Life
  • Exploring Boundaries of Life Hosting Spaces: Habitat Mapping
  • Biodiversity Observatory: Smart Systems for a Living Planet
  • Tracking the Wild: Animal Movement, Behaviour, and Biologging

The Call for Abstracts closed in May, and the submissions are currently under evaluation by the Working Group coordinators. These abstracts will shape the content of the oral and poster presentations distributed across the four-day programme.

The event will begin with a closed round table for representatives of European Research Infrastructures, aimed at identifying complementarities and synergies between their activities. The session brings together infrastructures working on biodiversity, ecosystems and the social components of the biosphere, under the lens of the One Health approach.

The first day will be fully dedicated to Research Infrastructures and presentations from the plenary speakers:

  • Prof. Anastasios Eleftheriou (HCMR), “Man and the Sea”
  • Prof. Carole Goble (University of Manchester), “Sharing and Re-using Computational Workflows – WorkflowHub and FAIR Workflows in Biodiversity”
  • Dr. Nikos Kyrpides (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), “The Dark Matter in Biology”.

The thematic sessions in the following days of the conference, will see the participation of Dr. Richard Field, (University of Nottingham), and Dr. Tammy Horton, (National Oceanography Centre).
In addition to scientific sessions and poster presentations, the conference will offer hands-on workshops focused on key LifeWatch ERIC services, including its Virtual Laboratories (vLabs) and Virtual Research Environments (VREs). The final day will be dedicated entirely to training activities.

Participation in BEeS 2025 is free of charge but subject to registration via the online form. The conference also offers special networking opportunities, including joint lunches and a social dinner with wine tasting and a vineyard tour at the stunning Scalarea Estate.

BEeS 2025 is supported by sponsors including Pensoft and Cretan Rhizotomists, and will see the participation of several related projects and initiatives.

Stay updated via the conference page, and keep an eye out for the upcoming publication of the Book of Abstracts through our website and newsletter.

Biodiversity and Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change Workshop

biodiversity ecosystem responses workshop (2)

Lecce, Italy

The LifeWatch ERIC Working Group on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change and the National Biodiversity Future Center organise the workshop on “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Responses to Climate Change“, to be held in Lecce, Italy, on 12 and 13 June 2025.

Climate change is profoundly affecting biodiversity and ecosystem processes, with implications at the global scale for primary productivity, standing biomass as well as potential impacts on human well-being and the achievement of SDGs. Biodiversity and ecosystem responses span ecological scales, encompassing structural and functional components, from individual life cycles and energetics to inter-individual interactions, population and species densities and distributions, to ecological networks and ecosystem services.

A proposal for a Special Issue including a selection of the workshop contributions has been presented to Ecological Indicators. Contributions will be presented as short talks of 10 minutes.

To find out more about our speakers, register and submit your abstract, please visit the following page:

https://www.lifewatch.eu/thematic-services-working-groups/wg-climate-change/meetings/workshop-biodiversity-and-ecosystem-responses-to-climate-change

LifeWatch Belgium: 72 shell species identified in the Big Seashell Survey event

Shells species

The eighth edition of the Big Seashell Survey, held in March, gathered more than 3,500 participants across 400 km of coastline in northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, breaking the previous years’ records!

Participants collected and identified nearly 150,000 shells from 72 different species, with few differences between the three countries, although the cut trough shell, the Atlantic jackknife clam, the banded wedge shell, and the common cockle made it to the top five in all three of them.

The Big Seashell Survey is one of the largest European marine citizen science projects: in Belgium it is coordinated by The Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), in partnership with EOS wetenschap, Natuurpunt, Provincie West-Vlaanderen, Strandwerkgroep, Kusterfgoed, and 10 coastal municipalities.

The examination of thousands of common cockle shells on the Belgian coast led to interesting findings. The cockles’ colour showed that the vast majority of these shells are in fact subfossils: hard remains from decades, or even thousands of years ago. It seems that the currently living cockle populations are, in fact, extremely rare, at least in the regions taken under exam. The blue-gray colour, moreover, seems to be associated with low-oxygen environments where the remains might have been buried, such as clay or organic matter. This was the case for 56% of the examined samples, while the ones in brighter colours might have laid in well-oxygenated environments, like gullies or open beach areas.

If you are curious about the other findings, read the full article on LifeWatch Belgium: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/old-cockles-and-record-number-shells-eighth-edition-big-seashell-survey

Picture from Nancy Fockedey: Cockles in 50 shades of grey and brown: subfossils and fossils from the Holocene and Pleistocene. Source: LifeWatch Belgium (VLIZ)

Join LifeWatch ERIC’s Thematic Services Working Groups

Thematic Services Working Groups

LifeWatch ERIC launches the minisites of the six Thematic Services Working Groups: hubs for knowledge and resources sharing, networking, and collaboration.

Co-developed by the LifeWatch ERIC Common Facilities in collaboration with the National Distributed Centres, they reflect the main priority areas of e-Service construction, and therefore are central to the 2022-2026 Infrastructure Strategic Working Plan.

The Thematic Services Working Groups are coordinated by the LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre and pursue three main objectives:

  • Strengthen collaboration between and within the Common Facilities and the Distributed Centres;
  • Review and update the mapping of the National scientific communities’ research needs in relation to the Thematic Services, and identify priority areas for development;
  • Promote and coordinate the participation of Distributed Centre research institutions in Horizon Europe and other European and international projects, on behalf of and in collaboration with LifeWatch ERIC, to co-design and co-construct the priority services with other key actors in the biodiversity and ecosystem research landscape.

The initiative officially took off in 2024, marked by a series of Thematic Service Workshops hosted by the National Distributed Centres, engaging local communities from the start.

Today, we are glad to present the Working Groups on the website: six dedicated entry points, each focused on a specific topic and open for participation!
Each page offers a brief overview of the scope and objectives, as well as a timeline of activities, including some future actions already planned.

The activities in each group are led by a coordinator from one of our National Distributed Centres, who will oversee the follow-up of its activities.

Moreover, the abstract submission topics for this year’s ‘BEeS’, LifeWatch ERIC’s Biodiversity & Ecosystem eScience Conference, have been selected in alignment with those of the Working Groups, given that they had been previously identified as key priority areas by the National Distributed Centres.

What are you waiting for? Find out more about the Working Groups, join forces with fellow experts and contribute to biodiversity and ecosystem research!

Biodiversity Meets Data: the EU & SERI project that will turn biodiversity data into action

BMD Project

BMD (Biodiversity Meets Data) aims to enhance access to high-throughput biodiversity monitoring tools, analyses, and data to support evidence-based conservation efforts across Europe.

The project, coordinated by Niels Raes from Naturalis Biodiversity Center, kicked off in Leiden, the Netherlands, at the beginning of March 2025 (click here for a nice group picture). Joaquín López Lérida attended the meeting on behalf of LifeWatch ERIC. During the event, presentations on the current biodiversity policy landscape highlighted how Biodiversity Meets Data can support key initiatives such as the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, the Birds and Habitats Directives and the Nature Restoration Law.

Even before its official launch, the project had already made its first appearances – at the The European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) workshop in November 2024, and at the Eurosite – European Land Conservation Network Annual Meeting in October.

More specifically, BMD will provide a Single Access Point (SAP) for natural resource managers and policymakers, offering access to: 

  • Biodiversity monitoring tools including image, sound, e-DNA and AI taxon identification services; 
  • Co-designed Virtual Research Environments (VREs) for terrestrial, freshwater and marine realms; 
  • A Web-GIS Map Viewer for data exploration.

The Virtual Research Environments (VREs) will build on the expertise of eLTER (terrestrial and freshwater domains) and LifeWatch ERIC (marine domain), combining biological data with environmental, climatic, and remotely sensed datasets.

These integrated platforms will bridge knowledge gaps through predictive modelling, supporting the identification of drivers of change and enabling analysis of climate and land cover impacts on species and habitats. 

In addition to its role in the marine VRE, LifeWatch ERIC will also contribute to the data visualisation engine and the design of the Single Access Point, and lead learning, training, and capacity-building initiatives.

The project’s tools and services will be co-designed and co-developed with stakeholders, ensuring user input guides every stage. Contributions from Biodiversa+ and BioDiMoBot during the kick-off meeting presented opportunities to connect BMD with ongoing biodiversity monitoring efforts across Europe.

BMD will help turn biodiversity data into actionable insights for conservation and policy, thanks to the collaboration of 14 partner institutions.

Funders: the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).

Stay in touch via the official website: https://bmd-project.eu

WoRMS reveals the list of ten remarkable new marine species from 2024

remarkable marine species

Every year, the World Register of Marine Species releases its annual list of the top ten remarkable marine species described by researchers during the previous year.

We are glad to announce that the 2024 list was revealed on 19 March, a date that coincides with World Taxonomist Appreciation Day. This date was not randomly chosen: it is worth noting that over 340 taxonomists around the world contribute their time to keeping the World Register of Marine Species up to date, and this is WoRMS’ way of acknowledging their work and celebrating taxonomists worldwide.

Selecting the top ten was no easy task, with an average of 2,000 fascinating new marine species discovered every year, and over 3,200 described in 2024 alone. The call for nominations was announced in December 2024 and sent to all WoRMS editors and major taxonomy journals.

The final decisions reflect the immense diversity of taxonomic groups in the marine environment, including crustaceans, corals, sponges, jellies, and worms.

Read the full press release here: https://marinespecies.org/worms-top-ten/2024/press-release

About WoRMS: hosted by the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ), within LifeWatch Belgium (the National Distributed Centre of LifeWatch ERIC – more info here), the World Register of Marine Species grew out of the ERMS, the European Register of Marine Species, combined with a series of registers maintained at the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ).

Women in Science: LifeWatching TV special feature for International Women’s Day 2025

women in science

Thanks to our daily activities and European projects, we’ve had the opportunity to work with inspiring female researchers, technologists, managers, policymakers and science communication professionals. 

For our International Women’s Day 2025 campaign, we have decided to put them in the spotlight and entirely dedicate the homepage of our LifeWatching TV to the talented women in science we have met over these years, collecting and republishing their interviews.

Some of these women are directly involved in LifeWatch ERIC or its National Distributed Centres, while others are researchers that we’ve had the chance to work with in the context of scientific projects.

We thought this was the perfect opportunity to revisit their work and listen once again to what they have to say, learning more about their expertise and understanding their impact on biodiversity and ecosystem research: from coastal wetlands to fisheries, bat populations to deep-sea observation, animal tracking and behaviour, invasive alien species, phytoplankton, to name just a few examples. After the end of this year’s campaign,these contents will remain available in the new permanent page “Women in Science”.

We have also expanded our efforts, replicating the initiative in our LifeWatch ERIC Podcasts, introducing a “Women in Science” category on our Podcasts page, making it easier to discover interviews and discussions with women scientists and showcase their contributions across various disciplines.

This is simply our way of recognising and celebrating the work of the women we have had the privilege to collaborate with over the years.

Explore our collection of podcasts and interviews here.
Watch the featured videos now on LifeWatching TV.