Connections Booklet: Discovering Biodiversity Genomics

By Luisa Marins and Kasia Fantoni

What is biodiversity? And genomics? How are they related to each other in ways that help species monitoring and conservation?

Throughout 2025, the “ERGA – iBOL Europe Connections” blog post series addressed these and many other questions about biodiversity genomics, such as the role that citizens play in biodiversity conservation, the difference between DNA barcodes and reference genomes, and all the related disciplines. 

This series of blog posts was produced by us, the Biodiversity Genomics Europe project’s Capacity Pillar team, composed of representatives from both the iBOL Europe and ERGA Secretariats. 

EasyConnections Booklet

Each Connection covers an aspect of biodiversity genomics and comes with a simplified-language version, the EasyConnection. The EasyConnections are intended for a lay audience and school pupils, and can be used by teachers at different levels of instruction.

Since the end of BGE is fast approaching, we decided to collect all of the EasyConnections in a single booklet, named “Connections – Discovering Biodiversity Genomics.”

It features eight chapters, links to extra material and media, and a “Games” section at the end to test your knowledge once you’ve read the leaflet. To make it accessible to as wide an audience as possible, we have been translating it into different European languages, and for now, it is accessible in Italian and Portuguese.

We hope that “Connections” will help you get a better understanding of the fascinating world of biodiversity genomics, and that you will enjoy playing with it!