Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery

Overview

Biodiversity is in crisis worldwide: ecosystems are increasingly threatened by climate change, habitat loss and human activities, while many species remain undiscovered. The Center for Integrative Biodiversity Discovery (CIBD) at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin addresses this challenge by accelerating the discovery, documentation and understanding of Earth's biodiversity before it is lost.

CIBD combines traditional biodiversity research with new technologies. High-throughput genomics, robotics and artificial intelligence enable the efficient processing and analysis of large biological samples. This approach helps to reveal the „dark matter“ of biodiversity – highly diverse but poorly studied groups of organisms, particularly invertebrates.

The centre develops scalable approaches to species discovery and biodiversity assessment, spanning integrative taxonomy, phylogenetics, evolutionary biology and biodiversity informatics. Its goal is to build a global inventory of life as a foundation for research, conservation and environmental policy.

CIBD develops its methods and research infrastructure together with an international network of partners and makes them openly available worldwide. Researchers from around the globe come to Berlin to learn high-throughput approaches to biodiversity discovery and apply them at their home institutions. By sharing open technologies, data and workflows, CIBD strengthens international knowledge exchange and helps build research capacity, particularly in biodiversity-rich regions. In this way, the centre contributes to a globally connected, open and data-driven approach to biodiversity science.