The meeting of the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections (SPNHC), International Partner – BHL (Biodiversity Heritage Library) and National Partner – NatSCA (Natural Sciences Collections Association) took place in Edinburgh from June 5 ^th -10 ^th 2022.

Our WHO-sponsored series of articles describing biodiversity data relevant to vector-borne diseases has now been published in GigaByte . This special issue presents a wide variety of data relating to the presence, spread, and diversity of organisms that are transmitting viruses, bacteria and parasites to humans.

Citizen Scientists collect and share enormous amounts of data on invasive mosquitoes from the Mosquito Alert project as part of our GBIF and WHO-supported series on vector-borne diseases. Just out in GigaByte is the latest data release from Mosquito Alert, a citizen science system for investigating and managing disease-carrying mosquitoes, and is part of our WHO-sponsored series on vector borne human diseases.

When coffee is sold as single origin or as the more expensive Arabica beans— do you really know whether you are getting what you’re paying for? Different coffee-producing regions need to enforce the standards and reputation of their coffee, and there is a growing industry looking at different technologies to more accurately classify and test coffee beans from different origins.

The 12th international meeting on Visualizing Biological Data took place on March 16–18, 2022 (AKA VIZBI 2022). This conference is always a visual treat, and with its focus on transforming how Life Scientists view data from Molecular and Cellular Biology and Biomedical Science this year’s event was no exception.

High-resolution images of the head of the blind salamander Proteus anguinus reveal adaptations for life in the dark. The proteus, also called the “olm”, is a strange beast – locals in the 1600s actually believed it was a baby dragon. In fact a blind salamander, it is snake-like in appearance, colorless, and can live up to 100 years.

A team led by scientists from Monash University have completed a major milestone towards achieving the rescue of the critically endangered helmeted honeyeater.

We have a Q&A with author Tom Edinburgh from the University of Cambridge on his new GigaByte paper presenting Sepsis-3 criteria in AmsterdamUMCdb, which is one of the largest freely accessible Intensive Care database in Europe.

We are pleased to see the 2022 Junior Research Parasite Award go to Jack Pilgrim for his work published last year in GigaScience, so here we highlight the ecosystem of awards acknowledging different parts of the research cycle. Jokingly spurred by a controversial medical editorial calling people carrying out data re-use and meta-analyses “research parasites”, this gave rise to the launch of the “Research Parasite Awards” focused on

UPDATE: GigaByte and GBIF webinar video added below.

This end-of-the-year festive summary is different from previous ones:  For the first time, we can look back at a full publication year of our new baby, GigaByte journal. The older sibling GigaScience will also get the attention it deserves, before celebrating its 10th birthday in 2022. Let’s first have a look at how the new family member is doing.