The Biodiversity Research Infrastructures #Townhall is ready to watch! 🎬 This recording is packed with updates on ARISE, eDentity, BGE, BMD and more. We dive into the latest developments and give a sneak peek into our plans moving forward. Don't miss this update! 🔗 www.youtube.com/watch?t=1&v=...

There was a party @naturalis.bsky.social yesterday, because from now on, our research infrastructure is open to anyone who wants to use it. See the video below to learn about what that means:

We helped write a publication about Community Scientists and their indispensable help in DNA-based biodiversity monitoring: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Our Sampling Lead Onno is, of course, also sampling himself. He found a new species for the Netherlands right on his own balcony, and made the national newspaper Telegraaf. Who only made five penis jokes in their story 🍆😀

The scientific collection of @naturalis.bsky.social is available to all researchers that want to work with it. This week, that included some environmental toxicologists interested in the amount of PFASs in whale skin. Interestingly, most of their whale skin is in the barnacle collection. 1/3

Missed our (probably last!) Townhall? Shame, because we talked about all things Arise, including being a building block for something even bigger. For example, Reinier van der Geest of @naturalis.bsky.social talked about using eDNA for biodiversity monitoring. www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4nb...

Join us this Tuesday at 10:00 for our next - and probably last - Townhall meeting. We will discuss ARISE as the first step in a much larger and more comprehensive infrastructure for biodiversity information:

Local newspaper Noordhollands Dagblad did a rather nice story about our work, using our test site in the Amsterdamse Waterleidingen as a starting point. In Dutch:

We're still glowing after this year's ARISE Day. If you were there, check out the photos. If you weren't, check out the video with the update about how we are doing. Next year, the ARISE Day will take a different form and probably a different name as well. We hope to see you again by then!

Two more weeks to Arise Day! We were actually full, but it turns out some people signed up twice and we still have a small number of spots left. Sign up quickly if you haven't already!

The Arise folk at the Westerdijk Institute keep going strong. In their most recent publication, they described nine new species from the Netherlands, including this beauty from Zeist, that lives together with poppy flowers.

Registration for the 2025 ARISE Day is now open. It's going to be great, and even greater if all of you join us. Read more here:

We are extremely sad to hear about the demise of malacologist Anthonie van Peursen. He was many things, including an avid member of our team of collectors contributing specimens for our DNA barcode library. We will miss his energy, knowledge and kind spirit. Our condolences to all who knew him.

By the way, we have a job opening. Know any good data engineers?

We just sent out our end-of-year newsletter. 2024 was a great year for us, and we couldn't even fit in all the highlights! Stay tuned for next year, in which we will share more ARISE infrastructure with more of you.

We made a magazine (in Dutch only, for now) for all the experts helping collect specimens for our DNA reference library. Thanks so much, all of you!

Don't forget: Saturday Sept 28 is Barcoding NL, the event for everyone who helps us collect samples for our DNA Barcodes reference library. Find out why we do it, and what's in it for you! The event is in Dutch.

Bij @arisenl.bsky.social zijn we een DNA-bieb aan het bouwen voor alle Nederlandse soorten. Daar hebben we hulp bij nodig, en voor de mensen die ons helpen organiseren we onder meer een jaarlijks gratis evenement. Ben jij of ken jij een echte soorten-expert? Ze zijn enorm welkom!

We are looking for (Dutch speaking) volunteers to help us out in the Leenderbos and Groote Heide natural reserves. If you want to help out science and the conservation of nature, and are available at least two days a week, check out the offer below: www.arise-biodiversity.nl/vrijwilliger...

Together with @staatsbosbeheer.bsky.social we installed a number of insect traps in the Leenderbos and Groote Heide nature reserves. Together, we'll monitor the effects of different decisions on biodiversity. We'll hopefully also be able to add a number of new species to our DNA reference library.

Our Sampling Tool ADA has been updated. It's better at scanning QR codes (it should work even if you already put your code in a tube) and now also allows for the sampling of plants!

Thanks again for joining our Arise Day last week, everyone!

The 2024 Arise Day was wonderful. A big thanks to everyone who joined us!

And we have liftoff for the 2024 Arise Day! Welcoming words by our project manager Elaine van Ommen Kloeke, and then a Keynote Speech by the wonderful Toke Høye. We hope everone will have a great day.

Oopsie! We just sent out an email to all of you joining our Arise Day next week, with a faulty link in it. The program can be found here:

PSA: Arise Day 2024 is fully booked. We're looking forward to having a great day with all of you! If you signed up but discovered that you can't make it after all, please let us know so we can give your seat to someone else.

With one month to go to Arise Day, we are at over 90% of capacity. Meaning that if you were going to sign up, right now would be a good time. We didn't even get around to telling everyone how proud we are to have @marionkoopmans.bsky.social and Toke Hoye as Keynote speakers!

We have a job opening for a project assistant. Come work with us!

We've been working non-stop since 2020, and slowly but surely, the Arise infrastructure is taking shape. NWO's in-house magazine thought it was time to update their readers about this:

As of today, the Arise website is available in Dutch, too. The automatic translations are not always 100% spot on 🙈, but we are aware of this and working to fix it.

As 2023 draws to a close, we'd like to draw your attention to some research that Arise collaborator Judy Baranes and her co-workers at the IBED published this month. It's about sensors, birds and fireworks.

Thinking about looking for a new job in 2024? Why not apply your skills in #bigdata technology to design and build a digital infrastructure that knows and recognizes all species in the Netherlands?

In the two days before Arise Day, @naturalis.bsky.social will host the Empowering Biodiversity Research conference. Found out more about it here, and consider turning your trip to Leiden into a three-day event: www.biodiversity.be/EBRIII

We just sent out our last newsletter of 2023. Biggest news: you can now register for the 2024 Arise Day!

Registration for Arise Day 2024 is now open! If you work on Arise, with Arise or simply want to know more about our infrastructure that aims to know and recognize all dutch species, Arise Day is for you. Will you join us on March 27, in @naturalis.bsky.social?

Happy world soil day, everyone? To celebrate, Westerdijk researcher Hazal Kandemir wrote about how we plan to get a much better view of all dutch soil species through Arise:

Our European sister project BGE is looking for biological collections to help with their DNA barcoding library. And they have money:

A milestone for our barcoding project: we've captured our first 1000 images using the cutting-edge Keyence microscope, a recent addition to our sampling workflow. It moves across a plate and takes photos of each well’s contents.

Work opportunity! Our pals @naturalis.bsky.social have a position for someone to help out our Team Sampling. Speaking Dutch is a job requirement. www.naturalis.nl/over-ons/wer...

More about our collaboration with CapGemini, resulting in AI for insect sound recognition.

The Dutch IT platform Emerce discussed our collaboration with Cap Gemini, where we built AI models for insect sound recognition right at the time when we need them most:

This week we had some journalists over to discuss our work in the Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen. One of our cameras there detected a warm blooded animal and took a picture:

We're still all abuzz about having so many experts over last Saturday! We wrote a blog about it here: www.arise-biodiversity.nl/post/barcodi...