Partner 10

Naturalis Biodiversity Center is a large-scale research facility hosting a natural history collection of over 37 million objects and over 100 researchers, who are experts in a wide range of organism groups. Naturalis has active partnerships with the Universities of Amsterdam, Leiden and Wageningen. In terms of collection size, Naturalis is one of the top five natural history museums in the world. Core expertise comprises theoretical systematics and the application of modern methods for taxonomy, evolutionary reconstructions, evo-devo research, ecological niche modelling, and biodiversity assessments. The joint capability of Naturalis includes a high profile on biodiversity informatics and a research community with proven project management experience. Naturalis including the Nationaal Herbarium Nederland has been partner in the FES program Versterking Infrastructuur Plantgezondheid (consortia Insects and Invasive Plant Species). These activities involved a broad network of external organizations and specialists, Naturalis scientific staff, ongoing research activities spanning multiple disciplines and approaches. Naturalis is coordinator of the EU FP7 infrastructure project pro-iBiosphere and various (inter)national Fauna and Flora projects and has experience in biodiversity change assessments, biodiversity informatics and international liaison; all aspects of modern systematics, biodiversity pattern analysis and taxonomy, morphology and morphometrics and molecular phylogenetics and evolutionary biology.

Naturalis Biodiversity Center will participate in WP3 (Quality), and WP4 (Access), and deliver feedback on documents produced in WP2 (Inventory), WP5 (Info-portal), WP6 (Reference collections), and WP7 (Dissemination).