Die FDP hat wieder eine Gelegenheit verpasst, Verwahrlosung zu stoppen. Diesmal hätte ein feuchter Lappen gereicht. Verwahrlosung gestoppt. Sicherheit geschaffen. Eine Energiewende hätte die Verwahrlosung durch fossilen Dreck sogar nachhaltig gestoppt.

Five years back in Berlin: DNA barcodes reveal species, but vouchers let us study them. Our open workflow moves vouchers from 96-well microplates into vials, keeps them safe, and makes them searchable & organized by species. Preprint: doi.org/10.64898/2026.08.06.…

Five years back in Berlin #5: The neglected elephants of animal diversity: millions of unknown species create a taxonomic bottleneck. Triage: 1: Target neglected clades dominating biomonitoring samples 2: Make sure common species are described first tinyurl.com/435dsz9t

Five years back in Berlin #4c: Too many species, too little time. Step 3: 3D imaging. KIT colleagues built two tools for us: the Levitator makes dead insects fly; DS-360° images wet specimens from all sides. Levitator: degruyterbrill.com/document/… DS-360°: ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract…

5 years back in Berlin and 10 years of nanopore barcoding for everyone, everywhere. From ~10% read errors to live barcoding on a laptop. Now we use DNA barcodes to turn images into AI training data for small insects. Too many species and too little time. doi.org/10.1111/cla.12566

Thanks to my coal-burning, beef-eating friends! We mantids reached Berlin only in the 1990. Warm summers and abandoned land really helped. Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania were easy, looking at Norway now. Some species debate climate change. We just follow it. tinyurl.com/ynpjz48d

Five years back in Berlin #4a: Finding the small and mighty Most species are <5 mm. But small ≠ unimportant: ants outweigh all wild birds + mammals and spiders eat as much prey as humans meat/fish: ~400–800 Mt per /lyear. Meet EntoSieve for size sorting onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/…

Five years back in Berlin #4: Too many species, too little time. ~90% of species remain unknown. So we need methods that scale: robotics, nanopore barcodes & AI. The 4 DiversityScanners image, measure, classify and sort insects, freeing taxonomists to focus on discovery.

Five years back in Berlin, and >650 species new to science. From crop-disease vectors to soil predators, CIBD researchers are bringing biology’s “dark matter” into the light—naming species so we can study, monitor and protect them. Explore: lnkd.in/e_uiKJwb

Global insect diversity may comprise 14–20 million species, with roughly 90% unknown. Even in Germany 2/3rd of species detected with metabarcoding cannot be matched to names. CIBD connects DNA, specimens, images to names. Detected biodiversity becomes interpretable knowledge.

Five years ago this month, after 19 years in Singapore, I moved back to Berlin. The photo shows me with my advisor, Professor Walter Sudhaus, at the Museum für Naturkunde, which stood behind the Wall when I studied in West Berlin. Life has a taste for unlikely plots.

Species descriptions should not be in "summary" PDFs only providing access to a fraction of the data underlying the conclusions. We here argue for "digitally native species" built around structured, specimen-linked, machine-actionable evidence from day 1. rdcu.be/fcbwh

Halloween News: Meet a new vampire fly (Hippoboscidae) 🧛‍♂️🪰 1 of 10 species found on citizen-reported bird carcasses in Singapore: Even dead birds can have productive afterlives! See host records, annotated images, pictorial keys & DNA diagnostics here doi.org/10.1155/jzs/8819646

The top 10 flying insect clades rule the skies—but defy the rules. Weak or inverted latitudinal diversity gradients leave biogeographers puzzled. Entomologists? Mildly amused. biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

🚫 Farewell to species descriptions with consensus barcodes ✨ Hello to Diagnostic Molecular Combinations (DMCs) ✅ State-specific ✅ Contrastive ✅Publication-ready Now even easier with the latest UITOTO, our updated user-friendly software; Preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.26.6…