Deadline: 30-Sep-23
The TETTRIs Consortium is pleased to announce a call for proposals to fund initiatives under Third-Party Projects (3PP).
This call supports research and innovation projects for transforming European taxonomy, with a total budget of nearly 1.8 million euros funded by the European Union, under the Framework Programme Horizon Europe.
The call invites proposals that contribute to validating the nine TETTRIs outcomes and expanding mechanisms for engaging in taxonomy-related participation in specific areas of high diversity and subject to special protection. The call supports facilities and initiatives in local nodes to enable the transfer of knowledge from educators in taxonomy and researchers working on natural science collections to targeted individuals. These include those working in biodiversity conservation, decision-makers, science teachers, museum educators, university students, citizens, and other stakeholders.
TETTRIs is a starting point to launch the above components and provides a plan for their sustainability beyond the project duration. In addition to the multidimensional model, TETTRIs will include a process for testing, assessment and validation that will involve on-field actors close to hotspots and protected areas. To do that, TETTRIs will collaborate with third-party projects (3PP) and allocate 30% of the project funding for these activities. The community-based perspective is fundamental to the entire ethos of the project from the inception stage to the piloting, evaluation and through to the final endorsement.
The main objectives for the distribution of third-party funding reflects the scope of the call:
- To pilot, support, guide and supervise the establishment of adequate facilities in several local nodes as well as build capacity near biodiversity hotspots as the key activity of the action, while ensuring the most efficient transfer of knowledge from scientific experts to societal actors.
Objectives
- Objective 1: To support, guide and supervise the establishment of adequate facilities in a pilot number of local nodes:
- enable the transfer of knowledge from educators, fundamental research and collections holders to people working in practice in biodiversity conservation in local nodes, hotspots and protected areas and
- activate mechanisms to engage taxonomy related participation in the field.
- Objective 2: Design and deploy a cascade funding mechanism to third party projects (3PP) to test the implementation of the developments under WP1, 4 and 6.
- Objective 3: Based on 3PP results and other data, make recommendations on building capacity in taxonomy and ensuring long term sustainability of the novel networks developed under the 3PP.
Funding Information
- Euros Award amount: Between 50.000 and 200.000 Euros
- The complete funding program to allocate €1.8 million of grant funding to the third-party projects (3PP) will be developed via co-creation with citizen scientists, represented in the Community Implementation Board (CIB).
- The third-party funding will be used to implement and validate activities initiated in Work Packages (WP) 1, 4 and 6 and link back to the following project objectives:
- Objective 3: Formulate a roadmap for physical and digital reference collections and validate it by creating a pollinator reference collection.
- Objective 4: Develop a sector-specific training framework and demonstrate it by facilitating training programmes that increase professional and non-professional taxonomy expertise.
- Objective 5: Test and validate the innovations developed with new taxonomic tools.
Dimensions
- The TETTRIs project aims to validate the in TETTRIs developed innovative approaches aligning with the broader innovation dimensions of the TETTRIs partnership. These dimensions include:
- Enhance the taxonomic knowledge and understanding of biodiversity, particularly in European biodiversity hotspots.
- Develop and test innovative scientific approaches, tools and technologies for taxonomic research, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, genomic approaches and imaging.
- Improve the accessibility and dissemination of taxonomic information, including open-access databases through the species-level indexing of collections, and citizen science initiatives.
- Build capacity in taxonomic research and education, particularly in underrepresented European biodiversity hotspots and protected areas, that have historically received less attention, resources, or opportunities in the field of taxonomic research and education.
- Promote public awareness and engagement in taxonomic research and biodiversity conservation.
Topic & Expected Outcome
- Topic 1: Species-level indexing of pollinator collections
- The proposed projects will help develop a general protocol for retrieving fundamental information on the contents of natural history collections.
- Topic 2: Improving access to local taxon lists and taxon- related scientific data through pragmatic name- mapping workflows
- The projects must demonstrate that by testing and applying the workflows provided by TETTRIs, they have significantly improved the linkage of taxonomic resources to the international backbone services.
- Topic 3: The co-development of AI-based image recognition for European terrestrial molluscs
- The project will result in the digitalisation (including images) of a large number of molluscs from several natural history collections.
- Topic 4: The co-development of AI-based sound recognition of European grasshoppers
- The projects should help to showcase that training professional and non-professional taxonomists in collecting sound recordings can help improve the model.
- Topic 5: Innovative molecular techniques for taxonomy: integrating genomic tools for the development of cost- efficient genetic markers for species identification and delimitation
- The project will result in thorough guidelines and workflows on the practical use and implementation of the genomic tools that leverage taxonomic research in biodiversity hotspots.
- Topic 6: The development of training programs for taxonomic research
- The project should implement one, two or three already developed by TETTRIs partners training program(s), that support three different target groups of participants to gain new knowledge, skills, competencies and behaviours in the field of taxonomy for pollinators, freshwater fauna and soil fauna, in European biodiversity hotspots and protected areas.
- Topic 7: Innovative cross- disciplinary projects focused on involvement of citizen scientists in monitoring biodiversity hotspots
- The project should raise public awareness and engagement with taxonomic research, biodiversity and conservation, with special focus on local/regional particularities.
Eligibility Criteria
- The applicant for the 3PP can be a single applicant (Applicant) or a consortium of multiple applicants (formed by a Main Applicant and Partners). Please consider that the composition of the 3PP is encouraged to be a consortium of multiple expertise (i.e., 2-3 applicants). Within the consortium the Main Applicant is seen as the entity applying for the project. The project partners are seen as collaborating entities.
- The call for 3PP is open to proposals from institutions (entities, associations or consortia) who are involved in research, education, conservation or innovation in taxonomy and other biodiversity-related topics. Any type of legal persons (e.g., museums, collections, research institutes, universities, SMEs, NGOs, public entities, etc.) are eligible without restriction or constraints as the main applicant or a partner. Involved parties in the project must have relevant expertise and experience in the proposed project area.
- Organisations/beneficiaries in the TETTRIs project are not eligible parties in the call.
For more information, visit 3rd Party Projects.
