Lynn Delgat

Against a background of the climate and biodiversity crises, there is an urgent need for robust and citable biodiversity information for policy and management decisions. Species are fundamental units of biodiversity and underpin communication in biology. Delineating, describing, and naming species provide the foundation for tracking biodiversity. Taxonomists recognise over 2 million described species, the scientific names of which follow provisions of codes of nomenclature, providing stability for communication about biodiversity. However, described species represent only a fraction of global biodiversity. Current advances in the fields of molecular biology and the growing use of image-based identifications have resulted in an explosion of informal species names globally, herein referred to as temporary names, increasing the rate of discovery of undescribed species and cryptic species complexes. We define two categories of temporary names: Type 1 names that are delineated in a local context but not further assessed; and Type 2 names that have been taxonomically assessed and recognised as either new or part of an unresolved species complex. We explore the different types and uses of temporary names, indicate how they can be managed in a robust and standardised manner and demonstrate how biodiversity databases, such as WoRMS, can be expanded to allow the tracking of both formal and informal scientific names. We propose a solution for the expanding problem of temporary names by defining and recommending the addition of Type 2 temporary names to nomenclatural databases such as WoRMS. We provide practical recommendations on how such names should be selected for entry and then entered to databases in a standardised way. These recommendations are a small step forward, but their broad adoption would support the robust integration of informal and formal taxonomies.

The DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections) Flanders consortium, with one of the set goals being "maturing" (i.e., optimizing the management of) and unlocking (i.e., publishing) their DNA collections, identified 1) the need for actively sharing best practices on the management of DNA collections; and 2) a need for guidance on how to bring theory into practice. During the DiSSCo Flanders project, a DNA collection working group was created. The working group is open to all biodiversity-related DNA collections associates in Belgium, including those in diverse roles such as researchers, lab technicians, collection managers and data managers. Around 50 people from 13 organizations are currently participating. Members can be passively (reading only) or actively (joining events) engaged. The strength, as well as one of the challenges, of the DiSSCo Flanders community is that the natural science collections are created and managed in different organizational contexts: universities, museum institutes and both governmental and non-governmental research organizations. This translates to a variety of collection management decisions and structures such as: decentralized or centralized; cold or room temperature storage; managed by an appointed curator or by a lab technician. The working group organizes meetings and workshops, tours of each other's collections, and shares a mailing list and an online document space. As its principal output, the group has co-created: “The key to bringing DNA collections to the next level” (Veltjen et al. 2024) with two main results: the "Challenges" and the “Key”. The "Challenges" is a list of 23 challenges applicable to DNA collection management. For example, challenge 8: "Select or customise collection management systems to meet the needs of DNA collections". They are intended to spark debate and give focus to the second output: the "Key." The "Key" lists seven yes/no questions: Do you have an up-to-date overview of all direct, internal stakeholders of the institute’s DNA collection and are you involving them in the (current) intent to “bring the DNA collection to the next level”? Is preserving a DNA collection within the scope of the institute? And is the DNA collection officially recognized within the institute? Do you have, on paper, a clear description of the scope of the DNA collection? Have you outlined the current overarching workflow of the DNA collection? Have you been able to establish your starting level on the "DNA collection maturation chart" and is the assessment properly logged? Level up, one level at a time, and log the process. Have you reached all of the goals in level 3 on the "DNA collection maturation chart"? Do you have a re-evaluation strategy for your DNA collection? Do you have an up-to-date overview of all direct, internal stakeholders of the institute’s DNA collection and are you involving them in the (current) intent to “bring the DNA collection to the next level”? Is preserving a DNA collection within the scope of the institute? And is the DNA collection officially recognized within the institute? Do you have, on paper, a clear description of the scope of the DNA collection? Have you outlined the current overarching workflow of the DNA collection? Have you been able to establish your starting level on the "DNA collection maturation chart" and is the assessment properly logged? Level up, one level at a time, and log the process. Have you reached all of the goals in level 3 on the "DNA collection maturation chart"? Do you have a re-evaluation strategy for your DNA collection? The "DNA collection maturation chart" has 11 categories (rows), three levels (columns) and 33 goals (see Table 1 in Veltjen et al. 2024). The Key provides 18 guidance chapters, which give in depth information, literature and user experiences (Suppl. material 2 in Veltjen et al. 2024). The Key is a specialized tool for DNA collections. It facilitates a standardized and holistic approach, allowing both a helicopter view of the maturation process and close-up view of specific goals. The working group aims to test the Key, whereby the process of "leveling up" is embedded in a community setting: sharing ambitions, setbacks, changes of plans and success stories. The output is ready in its first version. It is published as a reviewable publication, allowing post-publication peer review (Veltjen et al. 2024). The works are expected to evolve through time, depending on user feedback and user experiences. The working group and co-created output are positive examples of how a local community—sometimes managing smaller, or less conspicuous types of natural science collections—can work together and use their unique perspectives, experiences and needs to contribute to the international natural science collection and biobanking communities.

DNA collections are a valuable type of Natural Science collection, enabling the validation of past research, serving as a source for new genomic studies and supporting ex situ conservation. The DiSSCo Flanders DNA collection working group, aiming to advance and "unlock" their DNA collections, identified the need for: 1) actively sharing best practices regarding the management of DNA collections; and 2) providing guidance on how to bring theory into practice. By combining best practice examples from within the working group with available literature and brainstorming ideas, the working group co-created two outputs, referred to as: the "Challenges" and the "Key". The Challenges are a list of obstacles to DNA collection management, which shape the structure of the linked Key and can also be used to spark discussion amongst stakeholders. The Key is a tool that guides users through the maturation process of their DNA collection in a standardised way. It stimulates holistic growth, breaks down the needed work into manageable steps and helps to decide priorities during the process. Furthermore, the Key facilitates communication with both internal stakeholders and external DNA collection managers. The Key distinguishes itself from other self-assessment tools in several ways: it includes (re)investigation of the collection’s purpose and context; it is specialised for DNA collections; it delivers concrete goals linked to relevant information and shared experience; and it is inclusive, targeting all Natural Science DNA collections, regardless of their context or size.

The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) started in 2007 with the question “how many species live in our oceans?”. Now, a little over 15 years later, WoRMS is able to answer several questions related to marine species discovery rates and provides a dynamic number of existing marine species, based on the information provided by hundreds of taxonomic experts worldwide, who have proven to be diverse and dynamic. We present basic statistics on marine species discovery rates based on the currently available content of WoRMS, as well as insights in the day-to-day activities and dynamics of our editorial board and the progress made so far on the content priorities as defined by the WoRMS Steering Committee. As for all dynamic systems, WoRMS is not complete and faces challenges. As an endorsed project of the UN Ocean Decade, WoRMS aims to tackle a number of these challenges and knowledge-gaps by 2030, including detailed documentation of authorships and original descriptions, and will provide continuous support to all marine initiatives, programs and projects that rely on WoRMS as an authoritative classification and catalogue of marine names.

The European Ocean Biodiversity Information System (EurOBIS) was established in 2004, as part of the Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning European Union Network of Excellence (MarBEF) project. One of the key project tasks was to integrate different resources on marine biodiversity. This gave birth to EurOBIS, a data system to capture, integrate and present distribution of marine species from individual datasets. Integration and consolidation aimed to provide a better understanding of long-term, large-scale patterns in European marine waters. The first marine biogeographic data went live in August 2004, and its data content has been growing steadily. The general EurOBIS goal is to help fill gaps in our scientific knowledge by making diverse biogeographic data on marine species freely available and accessible online. It is part of the OBIS network, focusing on data collected within European marine waters, or collected by European researchers and institutes outside Europe. EurOBIS closely collaborates with other regional OBIS nodes in Europe. Over time, EurOBIS formed alliances with European initiatives as a supporting infrastructure and network, including serving as the backbone of the European Marine Observations and Data Network Biology (EMODnet Biology) since 2009 (Perez Perez et al. 2023) and being part of the central LifeWatch Species Information Backbone since 2014. Both projects ensure a constant flow of marine species occurrence data to EurOBIS. Nowadays, European Horizon project calls include a clause requiring that marine data generated within these projects need to become part of European data flows, specifically becoming part of EMODnet. This involves an increase in needed support of the EurOBIS Data Management Team (DMT), and additional training of data providers on how to deal with marine biodiversity data to make them suitable for a (semi-)automated flow to EMODnet Biology. These needs are addressed in several ways, ranging from in-person data training to online training courses being offered through the Ocean Teacher Global Academy (OTGA). The EurOBIS infrastructure is dynamic, keeping track of recent developments in the field of data formats and standards, compatible with DarwinCore (DwC) (Wieczorek et al. 2012). While EurOBIS started out as capturing presence and abundance data of species, it follows trends and needs in biodiversity informatics, allowing it to deal with all biodiversity-related measurements and DwC changes, including e.g., the development and implementation of the Extended Measurement or Fact extension (De Pooter et al. 2017). There is a parallel evolution in the way data are being mobilized and the tools offered to make data submission as easy as possible. Early on, data were submitted largely through email or a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server. The odd data transfer used Distributed Generic Information Retrieval (DiGIR). Since the ratification of DwC as a TDWG standard, a gradual transfer was observed from FTP and DiGIR to the usage of the Integrated Publishing Toolkit (Robertson et al. 2014) to share data. The DMT still receives datasets through email, although this is becoming an exception. The DMT also invests in online tools that help data suppliers to control their data, in terms of format, quality and adhering to accepted standards, increasing both the data quality and ease of sharing. Over time, the DMT observed several changes within the data-providing community. The rather reluctant attitude towards sharing data of the late 1990s/early 2000s has decreased, as data management and FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data (Wilkinson et al. 2016) became more embedded in the daily work of scientists. The DMT distinguishes several types of data providers: the perfectionists, the enthusiasts, the pragmatic minimalists, the legacy heirs. the perfectionists, the enthusiasts, the pragmatic minimalists, the legacy heirs. Each provider type poses challenges, balancing the need to capture the minimum information for the data to become FAIR and be useable by others, and a desire to be perfect, where perfection can be hard to reach and out of the control of the provider. The biggest struggle is not the barrier of sharing data, but dealing with the illustrious monsters “quality control” and “standard vocabularies.” There is still a need to train researchers on how to process and manage their data, which is a field where the regional and global OBIS networks can play a continuing important role.

Natural history specimens constitute physical evidence for past observations of nature. They hold further value as the backbone of taxonomy and as historical samples that can be subjected to further analysis. Yet, as physical objects scattered across collections around the world, their scientific use cases are limited by an overall lack of FAIRness, i.e. not easily Findable, Accessible, Interoperable or Reusable. Digitization of these specimens through imaging and categorical metadata capture can improve this FAIRness and has been done to some extent for decades already, but only recently have technical developments in the field of imaging and information technology made it possible for the fruits of these digitization efforts to be widely distributed and utilized. Digitization can be done in many different ways and while protocols may be well formulated during a project or within the responsible digitization team, they are often not communicated beyond to users, get lost with time and are not available for analysts to assess the state of digitization or make requests concerning material for which further information may be available. Hence, as digitization is ongoing, it is a difficult exercise to estimate how much has been digitized, and to what extent, at the collection level or on a larger scale. The Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen (MIDS) standard that is currently under development by a Working Group of Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) aims to address this problem by defining hierarchical levels of digitization, each associated with a set of criteria for a level to be achieved by an individual specimen. MIDS has been in development since work in the ICEDIG project in 2019 and its earlier drafts have been used in surveys to try and determine digitization status, often through coarse estimates based on the experience of curators. As a result, these scores cannot be considered reproducible or particularly reliable. Ideally, MIDS scores can be calculated automatically based on a mapping made between the data model of the source and the MIDS criteria. These mappings should also take into account any data value that is known not to be reflective of digitization status. While in an ideal world there would be only one accepted mapping for any data model, different practices causing interoperability conflicts and different kinds of specimens will likely continue to require slight modifications. To make this concrete, we constructed a few JSON schemas that specify such mappings, based on the current specification of the MIDS standard and the state of biodiversity data in a few sources, including Darwin Core archives for occurrence data as produced by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). These schemas could be incorporated into existing data publication workflows to automatically calculate MIDS levels. We have also developed an R Shiny app with a user interface to make calculations and simple adjustments of the schemas. We welcome anyone interested to further develop the syntax and philosophy behind the schemas and their integration into other systems.

Russula albonigra is considered a well-known species, morphologically delimited by the context of the basidiomata blackening without intermediate reddening, and the menthol-cooling taste of the lamellae. It is supposed to have a broad ecological range and a large distribution area. A thorough molecular analysis based on four nuclear markers (ITS, LSU, RPB2 and TEF1-α) shows this traditional concept of R. albonigra s. lat. represents a species complex consisting of at least five European, three North American, and one Chinese species. Morphological study shows traditional characters used to delimit R. albonigra are not always reliable. Therefore, a new delimitation of the R. albonigra complex is proposed and a key to the described European species of R. subgen. Compactae is presented. A lectotype and an epitype are designated for R. albonigra and three new European species are described: R. ambusta, R. nigrifacta, and R. ustulata. Different thresholds of UNITE species hypotheses were tested against the taxonomic data. The distance threshold of 0.5% gives a perfect match to the phylogenetically defined species within the R. albonigra complex. Publicly available sequence data can contribute to species delimitation and increase our knowledge on ecology and distribution, but the pitfalls are short and low quality sequences.

Species of the ectomycorrhizal genus Lactifluus, and often entire sections, are typically unique to a single continent. Given these biogeographic patterns, an interesting region to study their diversity is Central America and the Caribbean, since the region is closely connected to and often considered a part of the North American continent, but biogeographically belong to the Neotropical realm, and comprises several regions with different geologic histories. Based on a multi-gene phylogeny and morphological study, this study shows that Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean harbour at least 35 Lactifluus species, of which 33 were never reported outside of this region. It was found that species from the Caribbean generally show affinities to South American taxa, while species from the Central American mainland generally show affinities to Northern hemispheric taxa. We hypothesise that host specificity and/or climate play a crucial role in these different origins of diversity. Because of these different affinities, Caribbean islands harbour a completely different Lactifluus diversity than the Central American mainland. The majority of species occurring on the islands can be considered endemic to certain islands or island groups. In this paper, detailed morphological descriptions are given, with a focus on the unique diversity of the islands, and identification keys to all hitherto described Lactifluus species occurring in Central America and the Caribbean are provided. One new section, Lactifluus sect. Nebulosi, and three new species, Lactifluus guadeloupensis, Lactifluus lepus and Lactifluus marmoratus are described.

Novel species of fungi described in this study include those from various countries as follows: Antarctica , Apenidiella antarctica from permafrost, Cladosporium fildesense fromanunidentifiedmarinesponge. Argentina , Geastrum wrightii onhumusinmixedforest. Australia , Golovinomyces glandulariae on Glandularia aristigera, Neoanungitea eucalyptorum on leaves of Eucalyptus grandis, Teratosphaeria corymbiicola on leaves of Corymbia ficifolia, Xylaria eucalypti on leaves of Eucalyptus radiata. Brazil, Bovista psammophila on soil, Fusarium awaxy on rotten stalks of Zea mays, Geastrum lanuginosum on leaf litter covered soil, Hermetothecium mikaniae-micranthae (incl. Hermetothecium gen. nov.)on Mikania micrantha, Penicillium reconvexovelosoi in soil, Stagonosporopsis vannaccii from pod of Glycine max. British Virgin Isles , Lactifluus guanensis onsoil. Canada , Sorocybe oblongispora on resin of Picea rubens. Chile, Colletotrichum roseum on leaves of Lapageria rosea. China, Setophoma caverna fromcarbonatiteinKarstcave. Colombia , Lareunionomyces eucalypticola on leaves of Eucalyptus grandis. Costa Rica, Psathyrella pivae onwood. Cyprus , Clavulina iris oncalcareoussubstrate. France , Chromosera ambigua and Clavulina iris var. occidentalis onsoil. French West Indies , Helminthosphaeria hispidissima ondeadwood. Guatemala , Talaromyces guatemalensis insoil. Malaysia , Neotracylla pini (incl. Tracyllales ord. nov. and Neotra- cylla gen. nov.)and Vermiculariopsiella pini on needles of Pinus tecunumanii. New Zealand, Neoconiothyrium viticola on stems of Vitis vinifera, Parafenestella pittospori on Pittosporum tenuifolium, Pilidium novae-zelandiae on Phoenix sp. Pakistan , Russula quercus-floribundae onforestfloor. Portugal , Trichoderma aestuarinum from salinewater. Russia , Pluteus liliputianus on fallen branch of deciduous tree, Pluteus spurius on decaying deciduouswoodorsoil. South Africa , Alloconiothyrium encephalarti, Phyllosticta encephalarticola and Neothyrostroma encephalarti (incl. Neothyrostroma gen. nov.)onleavesof Encephalartos sp., Chalara eucalypticola on leaf spots of Eucalyptus grandis_× urophylla, Clypeosphaeria oleae on leaves of Olea capensis, Cylindrocladiella postalofficium on leaf litter of Sideroxylon inerme , Cylindromonium eugeniicola (incl. Cylindromonium gen. nov.)onleaflitterof Eugenia capensis , Cyphellophora goniomatis on leaves of Gonioma kamassi , Nothodactylaria nephrolepidis (incl. Nothodactylaria gen. nov. and Nothodactylariaceae fam. nov.)onleavesof Nephrolepis exaltata , Falcocladium eucalypti and Gyrothrix eucalypti on leaves of Eucalyptus sp., Gyrothrix oleae on leaves of Olea capensis subsp. macrocarpa , Harzia metro sideri on leaf litter of Metrosideros sp., Hippopotamyces phragmitis (incl. Hippopota- myces gen. nov.)onleavesof Phragmites australis , Lectera philenopterae on Philenoptera violacea , Leptosillia mayteni on leaves of Maytenus heterophylla , Lithohypha aloicola and Neoplatysporoides aloes on leaves of Aloe sp., Millesimomyces rhoicissi (incl. Millesimomyces gen. nov.) on leaves of Rhoicissus digitata , Neodevriesia strelitziicola on leaf litter of Strelitzia nicolai , Neokirramyces syzygii (incl. Neokirramyces gen. nov.)onleafspotsof