UPDATE: GigaByte and GBIF webinar video added below.

UPDATE: Deadline extended until 30 March 2022 or until maximum of 15 accepted manuscripts is reached—only a few slots remain! GigaScience Press partnering with GBIF are supported by TDR, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, hosted at the World Health Organization, to release a special issue for publication of new datasets presenting biodiversity data for research on vectors of human diseases.

Genomics is a powerful technology that helps us understand the Tree of Life. Biodiversity Genomics 2021 was a virtual conference that took place on 27 ^th September-1st October 2021 that demonstrated how genomics can inform conservation and food security, and can additionally help us understand evolutionary novelties such as symbiosis.

Cell Bio 2020 Virtual – the online ASCB|EMBO Meeting – took place on 2-16 December 2020 and offered many invaluable insights on the structural and evolutionary basis of biological systems.

“Extinction is forever – so our action must be immediate.” – Sir David Attenborough, Sept 30 ^th 2020 Biodiversity Genomics 2020 aimed to bring together researchers across the world to celebrate the global achievement in genome sequencing in an effort to “sequence life for the future of life”. This was a virtual conference that took place on 5 ^th -9 ^th September 2020 and the GigaScienc e team

Taylor Noble As the ecology community expands, it is now adopting new ways of making sense of the plethora of data produced from diverse approaches, including ocean research, eco-genomics, limnology, and macrosystems ecology, through more integrative means – improving our understanding of biology in a broader sense.

The great responsibility Every discipline of science is unique.  Ecology is no exception.  We work in diverse, complex, context-dependent systems. Global change and anthropogenic influences are very real issues for the health of the planet that ecologists often examine.  As a discipline, we have moved from context-dependent, local studies to much larger, integrated studies.

The rate of species extinction has lent increasing urgency to the description of new species, but in this supposedly networked “big data” era the process of cataloging the rich tapestry of life has changed little since the time of Linnaeus.

Following from our previous blog posting, here we profile and interview Dr Xin Zhou, lead author of our recent “squishome” insect goo metabarcoding paper.

Insect goo aids biodiversity research Apologies to Jonathan Eisen (see Badomics in the journal), but today in GigaScience we publish a new “squishomics” approach for assessing and understanding biodiversity, using the slightly wacky sounding method of combining DNA-soup made from crushed-up insects and the latest sequencing technology.