Líffræðifélag Íslands - biologia.is
Líffræðiráðstefnan 2025
Erindi/veggspjald / Talk/poster V74
Höfundar / Authors: Darya Chernikhova & Charla Basran
Starfsvettvangur / Affiliations: University of Iceland
Kynnir / Presenter: Darya Chernikhova
Conservation biobanks and data portals facilitate open data, democratize access, enable follow-up studies and reproducibility confirmations, and help extend ecological baselines. Fieldwork is difficult and expensive, with limited resampling opportunities and environments that are changing fast. How is biobanking being used to address the problem? Can it amplify the impact of smaller studies? What are the relationships between biobanking, "publish or perish", and slow science? This year, we published a review of biobanking as a field: its history, how it supports science, and what we need to move forward. We identified gaps in standardization and vouchering and discussed the institutional, cultural, and technical barriers in academia and how they relate to the field. We then suggested improvements to academic funding and publishing models. Two case studies illustrate the diversities and commonalities of the field: cetacean monitoring through citizen science and preservation of microbiomes for conservation and bioprospecting. In the former, we suggested strategies for harmonizing data. In the latter, we proposed cryopreservation of whole living microbiome communities. We frame biobanking as a form of cooperative science, essential to accelerating research under climate change-related pressures, and advocated for international investment as the precautionary approach. So let's talk about liquid nitrogen, Victorian-era menus, and whales, we promise they do relate.