On 22 October 2021, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (EASA) organised the 11th Conference of the Danube Academies which took place online. The theme of the Conference was “Climate change and climate control”. […]
New approaches in obtaining and studying biomass from microalgae are applied by scientists from the Laboratory of Experimental Algology at the Institute of Plant Physiology and Genetics – BAS, which is among the leading research units in Bulgaria. The team of specialists is engaged in the study of processes of physiology, biochemistry and biotechnology with microalgae. […]
DNA barcoding is a marker-based approach in which a short nucleotide sequence from the genome serves as a marker for the taxonomic identification of organisms regardless of sex, developmental stage and integrity. Analogous to the black-and-white strokes of grocery store barcodes that provide information on name, price and manufacturer, each individual in nature has its own unique DNA sequence, allowing scientists to determine its belonging to a particular family, genus, or species. […]
The low-temperature chamber supports the storage of specimens in the Herbarium of the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Studies of BAS. The state-of-the-art equipment is being used for the first time at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and is funded by the National Roadmap for Research Infrastructures. The Herbarium is the richest and most representative scientific collection for the flora of Bulgaria and South-Eastern Europe. It contains about 200 000 specimens. It is registered in the international information system for the most important herbarium collections 'Index Herbariorum' with the acronym SOM. Conservation of the collection from pests - various species of insects, mainly beetles, is among the priorities of the scientists and curators of the scientific collection. With the new chamber which maintains a [...]
Medicinal plants are one of the greatest treasures of our country. The first step for the conservation and sustainable use of this wealth is well knowing it. The Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research has established an ex situ collection of medicinal and essential oil plants which is maintained and updated with new species every year. The collection includes rare and endangered species such as Mursala tea, marsh snowdrops, haberlea rhodopensis, alkanna tinctoria, elecampane, shrubby cinquefoil and others. […]
An international team of paleontologists, in which one of the lead authors is Prof. Nikolai Spassov from the National Museum of Natural History of BAS, has published new data and arguments for the dispersal of mammalian fauna and our human ancestors from Eurasia to Africa millions of years ago. Zagros Mountains in Iran on the border with Mesopotamia (photo by Prof. M. Böhme) The idea that the formation of Sahara and the Arabian Desert was once a barrier to faunal exchange between Eurasia and Africa was put forward in the 1980s. At the same time, according to another hypothesis from the late nineties, the roots of today's mammalian fauna of the African savanna are linked to the "Pikermian" savanna biome of the Late [...]
