Subterranean ecosystems host a broad diversity of specialized and endemic organisms that account for a unique fraction of the global taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity. Furthermore, they deliver crucial nature’s contributions to people—especially the provisioning of potable water to more than half of the world’s population. Yet, these out-of-sight ecosystems are systematically overlooked in post-2020 biodiversity and climate change targets. Only 6.9% of known subterranean ecosystems overlap with the global network of protected areas, with just a few of these areas designed to account for their vertical dimension. Two main impediments are responsible for this lack of protection. First, subterranean biodiversity patterns remain largely unmapped, even in areas with a long speleological tradition such as Europe. Second, we lack a mechanistic understanding of subterranean species' response to human-induced perturbations. The project DarCo aims to map subterranean biodiversity patterns across Europe and develop an explicit plan to incorporate subterranean ecosystems in the European Union (EU) Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. To this end, we have established a multidisciplinary team of leading scientists in subterranean biology, macroecology, and conservation science from a broad range of European countries. The project is articulated in three interconnected work packages devoted to direct research (WP2–4), plus a fourth package (WP5) aimed at maximizing the dissemination of results and engagement of stakeholders to implement practical conservation. First, by compiling existing databases and leveraging a capillary network of international collaborators, we will gather distribution data, traits, and phylogenies for all major subterranean animal groups, including crustaceans, mollusks, insects, and vertebrates (WP2). These data will serve to predict species responses to human threats using Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities (WP3). Models' predictions of biodiversity change will provide the basis for a first dynamic mapping of subterranean life in Europe. By intersecting maps of diversity patterns, threats, and protected areas, we will design a plan to protect subterranean biodiversity complementing the current EU network of protected areas (Natura 2000), while taking into account climate-driven shifts in subterranean ecoregions (WP4). Finally, through target activities in WP5, we seek to raise societal awareness about subterranean ecosystems and invite stakeholders to incorporate subterranean biodiversity in multilateral agreements. In compliance with the European Plan S, we will make all data open and re-usable by the development of a centralized and open database on subterranean life—the Subterranean Biodiversity Platform. This will ensure that future generations will be able to build upon knowledge accumulated on subterranean biodiversity and monitor the effectiveness of today’s protection measures in the years ahead.

Accurate taxonomic knowledge and tools are needed to understand the drivers and impact of biodiversity decline. However, the field of taxonomy is severely hampered by a continuous decrease in capacity. With TETTRIs, we envision a transformative change in the field of taxonomy to build and sustain taxonomic research capacity through increasing knowledge and developing systems. TETTRIs will achieve this aim by creating joint knowledge in reference collections, training frameworks, and with innovative tools as well as by developing centralized resources providing access to an expertise marketplace, the taxonomic knowledge platform, and career paths. The core methodology for reaching these objectives includes co-creation with citizen scientists, and professionals in biodiversity hotspots. The open-access knowledge and systems built into TETTRIs, together with citizen scientists, will accelerate the integration and expansion of taxonomy in education, governance, and multidisciplinary research. This will ensure the long-term relevance of taxonomy as an instrumental science, necessary to halt European and global biodiversity loss, and ensuring ecosystems and their services are preserved and sustainably restored on land, inland water and at sea. TETTRIs builds taxonomic research capacity near biodiversity hotspots by networking natural history museums and other taxonomic facilities through bottom-up co-creation between 17 partners. The consortium includes the European Citizen Science Association and several of Europe's leading natural history museums, botanic gardens and universities unified under CETAF, the leading European voice for taxonomy and systematic biology. Impact throughout the EU and beyond is secured through involvement of associated initiatives such as DiSSCo and DEST, partners in third party projects, and key TETTRIs dissemination activities towards a new generation of taxonomists, citizen scientists, users in need of taxonomic knowledge, and decision makers

Fungi constitute one of the largest groups of organisms on earth with central importance for ecosystem functioning. Despite their obvious relevance for understanding nature and ecosystem change, they have traditionally been neglected in conservation and monitoring, implying a wide-ranging knowledge gap. This project application has an overarching goal of closing this gap, by bringing fungi firmly on the biodiversity map. It will use existing citizen science data to explore spatiotemporal changes in fungal communities and analyse how well the Habitats Directive captures fungal biodiversity. Further, it will develop and test new tools and methods for fungal biodiversity mapping and monitoring, combining citizen science and standardized sampling of DNA from environmental sampling (eDNA). Finally, an important objective is to consolidate open data resources underlying collaboration on fungal biodiversity, by substantially improving taxonomic identification and data linked to DNA-based fungal occurrences. Overall, the project will hence address all three themes of the open Biodiversa call. The project is structured into clearly delegated, yet interlinked thematic work packages (WPs): 1. Improving identification of and unambiguous communication on fungal species 2. Applying and Improving AI tools for fungal monitoring 3. Involving citizen scientists in biodiversity discovery and monitoring 4. Sampling fungal communities by eDNA and 5. Analysing fungal biodiversity patterns in time and space. The project involves computer scientists, bioinformaticians, ecologists, taxonomists and citizen scientists collaborating to solve questions of societal interest. It is novel and seeking maximal applied impact by combining well-established, but so far isolated, tools in innovative ways. The consortium behind the project has a strong track record of previous collaborations and bridges research traditions in Northern, Central and Southern Europe, securing transfer of knowledge across regions, and a wide geographical scope on the ground for those WPs where this is central, i.e., WPs 1, 3 and 4. The project will not only provide a much-needed insight into the conservation status of fungi in Europe. Due to the critical roles fungi play in ecosystems, and their sensitivity to ecosystem change, improved insights into the fungal dimension of biodiversity will be of huge importance for understanding, more broadly, how global change affect ecosystems and associated ecosystem services mediated by fungi. Finally, we believe that the project will have impact on conservation and monitoring in other organism groups, by showcasing how molecular and AI methods in combination with unambiguous communication on species can be combined to increase credibility and impact of biodiversity data

European natural history collections are a critical infrastructure for meeting the most important challenge humans face over the next 30 years – mapping a sustainable future for ourselves and the natural systems on which we depend – and for answering fundamental scientific questions about ecological, evolutionary, and geological processes. Since 2004 SYNTHESYS has been an essential instrument supporting this community, underpinning new ways to access and exploit collections, harmonising policy and providing significant new insights for thousands of researchers, while fostering the development of new approaches to face urgent societal challenges. SYNTHESYS+ is a fourth iteration of this programme, and represents a step change in evolution of this community. For the first time SYNTHESYS+ brings together the European branches of the global natural science organisations (GBIF, TDWG, GGBN and CETAF) with an unprecedented number of collections, to integrate, innovate and internationalise our efforts within the global scientific collections community. Major new developments addressed by SYNTHESYS+ include the delivery of a new virtual access programme, providing digitisation on demand services to a significantly expanded user community; the construction of a European Loans and Visits System (ELViS) providing, for the first time, a unified gateway to accessing digital, physical and molecular collections; and a new data processing platform (the Specimen Data Refinery), applying cutting edge artificial intelligence to dramatically speed up the digital mobilisation of natural history collections. The activities of SYNTHESYS+ form a critical dependency for DiSSCo - the Distributed System of Scientific Collections, which is the European collection communities ESFRI initiative. DiSSCo will undertake the maintenance and sustainability of SYNTHESYS+ products at the end of the programme.