H2020 BIG4 Project: BIG4 - Biosystematics, Informatics and Genetics of the 4 major insect groups: training the researchers and entrepreneurs of tomorrow

The mystery of insects revealed Insects constitute the most abundant life form on Earth. To harness the enormous potential of their biological diversity, we need to understand key aspects of their evolutionary origin, diversification, and distribution. Insects constitute more than half of all living species on Earth and have a huge impact on natural and anthropogenic ecosystems. For humans, they serve as important model organisms, but at the same time, they could also be dangerous pests or disease vectors. Given the high ecological specialization of insects, habitat destruction threatens many species with extinction even before they are properly studied and given a taxonomic name.

The EU-funded interdisciplinary BIG4 project was designed to study the four largest insect groups (beetles; bees, ants, and wasps; flies and mosquitoes; and moths and butterflies) and the services they could provide. It brought together academia and industry, with cutting-edge methods in genomics, phylogenetics, and informatics—all necessary for training early career researchers. “The idea was to address hotspots of largely unknown insect diversity to better understand their potential for economic and societal needs,” says project coordinator Professor Alexey Solodovnikov, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow. Novel methodologies for insect research The recruited researchers embarked on several synergistic and complementary projects that covered a variety of topics focused on the evolution and taxonomy of the target insect groups. They developed a digital infrastructure to acquire and publish high-quality insect biodiversity data.

The BIG4 team demonstrated that artificial intelligence has great potential for discovering insect species with unprecedented speed and accuracy. An image-based identification tool was designed for citizen scientists, amateur entomologists, and professional scientists using cutting-edge image recognition technology.

In terms of biodiversity inventory, BIG4 employed metagenomic techniques that promise to completely revolutionize environmental monitoring and even species discovery. Furthermore, researchers developed advanced methods to collect phylogenetic data from poorly preserved fossil or recent species, using them to determine the evolutionary relationships between major lineages of gall wasps, moths, flies, and beetles. The new protocols also made it possible to study rare specimens and fossils in unprecedented detail.

BIG4 scientists went even further and used these methods to study insect evolutionary pathways, such as the adaptation of their wings to various flight modes. Advanced DNA sequencing techniques provided important phylogenetic information for BIG4. According to Professor Solodovnikov, "The extraction of ancient DNA from previously unavailable museum specimens will undoubtedly revolutionize biodiversity discovery."

The next era in insect research. Collectively, BIG4 employed a broad spectrum of modern and innovative approaches to reveal the tree of life of various insect lineages, helping to develop insect phylogenomics. This project is one of the few large-scale funded initiatives investigating those segments of the planet's biota that comprise the greatest concentration of the least-known species diversity.

Looking ahead, Professor Solodovnikov believes that "BIG4 broke the established bias of researching larger but less abundant organisms. The cohort of trained young researchers, who will soon form their own research teams, will continue this legacy and invest in future insect research." BIG4 emphasized the need for resources to further address this hidden biological megadiversity, to gain a broader view of the living world and its functions.