LIFEPLAN: A worldwide biodiversity sampling design

biodiversity over extended time-periods, across a wide variety of different habitats, and in all major species groups, is essential. To establish a baseline against which to gauge future change, this monitoring needs to start now. Current biodiversity surveys are often limited in spatial coverage and timespan, biased towards regions with the most people and financial resources, and restricted to species that are easiest to see and identify [3–6]. As experts using morphological identification are commonly specialists in one or a few groups, there are simply not enough experts to produce biodiversity data with truly global coverage of the most diverse species groups [7]. In recent years, the development of molecular identification and machine learning methods, as well as increases in computing power, have enabled us to teach algorithms to identify species [8–10]. The sheer number of samples that can be identified by a computer is thus far greater than what human experts could ever process. To take full advantage of these new methods, we have devised sampling designs that gener- ate consistent data. In the LIFEPLAN project, sampling started in 2021 and is to continue until the end of 2025. A central aim was to create a standardised sampling scheme for monitoring terrestrial animal and fungal biodiversity under any climatic conditions. These methods require minimal technical or taxonomic expertise, allowing a wide range of participants to col- lect data. While many national long term monitoring endeavours already exist [11–13], LIFE-

PLAN is the first to create a worldwide sampling design to systematically collect data to target a broad range of taxonomic groups, which can be used for monitoring biodiversity throughout the year. By combining these sampling methods on a large scale with automated species identi- fication and novel statistical methods, LIFEPLAN aims to generate a predictive understanding of global biodiversity. These methods are replicable in time and space, which allows any future dataset that would be collected by identical methods to be compared to the original Lifeplan data. While the technology will improve, we will still be able to infer changes in biodiversity by matching the sampling design. The sampling design of LIFEPLAN is aimed at covering major terrestrial taxa excluding plants; thus, sampling is aimed at arthropods, fungi and vertebrates. Arthropods are collected with passive Malaise traps. To learn both what fungi are dispersing in the area as well as which species are actually growing in the soil, we collect fungal spores from the air with cyclone sam- plers as well as soil fungi from soil samples. For large or audible groups such as mammals and birds, we use camera traps and audio recorders, which are non-invasive and low-cost. Even these semi-automated methods do require regular personnel to collect the samples every week year-round. The personnel must be able to negotiate the common challenges of field work in their local conditions and have basic computer skills. Some financial resources

are also required to purchase the specialised equipment and consumables, and to fund the DNA sequencing. Having all these elements in place at a site that is also suitable for sampling has limited global LIFEPLAN coverage, as such sites are much easier to find in regions with more financial resources. The specific makes and models of equipment used have had to be cost-effective, but are challenged by some climatic conditions. Humidity is causing breakage in camera traps and AudioMoths, and cyclone samplers are struggling in freezing temperatures. International ship- ping of physical samples to a DNA sequencing facility requires special permits, and transfer- ring the large amounts of image and audio data collected requires a stable and reasonably fast internet connection. The methods for identifying species from these samples are still developing and improving. One limitation is the availability of annotated reference data [11, 14–21] that connects a DNA barcode sequence, image or sound to a known species. We are unable to identify all the species collected, and many of the species that we collect are novel and require taxonomical work to PLOS ONE LIFEPLAN: A worldwide biodiversity sampling design PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0313353 December 31, 2024 2 / 15 Funding: OO, TR: grant number 856506. European Research Council (ERC), https://erc.europa.eu/ homepage. The funder did not play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. The work of all the authors was supported by the same

grant awarded to OO and TR. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.