Systematic Biology and Biodiversity Inventories | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Systematic Biology and Biodiversity Inventories (SBBI) Cluster is a grant funding opportunity focused on building core knowledge about Earths biodiversity through modern taxonomy and systematics. At its center, the cluster supports research that (1) uses phylogenetic approaches to understand how life has evolved across time and geography, (2) discovers, describes, and catalogs species diversity worldwide, and (3) organizes the resulting taxonomic and evolutionary information into formats that are easy to retrieve and broadly useful to both science and society. In practice, this means funding projects that generate solid species-level knowledge, connect that knowledge to evolutionary history, and make the outputs accessible through well-structured classifications, identification tools, and openly usable data resources.

The cluster funds work primarily through two standing NSF programs: Systematic Biology and Biodiversity Inventories. The Systematic Biology Program emphasizes the scientific study of biological diversity and phylogeny across all organismal groups and environments, including marine systems. Typical activities include discovering and describing species, building or refining hierarchical classifications that can predict relationships and support reliable identification, producing identification keys, and analyzing evolutionary and biogeographic patterns across lineages and across the tree of life. A notable feature of this program is its support for revisionary and monographic research that uses modern information technology end-to-end, from data capture and analysis through to electronic publication and dissemination, reflecting an expectation that systematic research should produce durable, shareable, and digitally integrated products.

The Biodiversity Inventories Program is more explicitly expeditionary and survey-oriented, supporting field and collection-based efforts to discover, document, and describe plant, animal, and microbial diversity worldwide in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats. A strong emphasis is placed on well-vouchered natural history collections (or, where appropriate, stocks and cultures) and on the databases that curate and connect those physical resources to the scientific record. The program supports multiple survey designs: area-based inventories (focused on particular regions and often paired with biogeographic or evolutionary questions), clade-based inventories (targeting a taxonomic group at continental to global scales, often tied to evolutionary hypothesis testing), and guild-based inventories (pairing inventory work with ecological hypothesis testing). The opportunity also clarifies a boundary: DNA-only inventory projects that do not directly address organismal diversity are discouraged, signaling that molecular tools are welcomed when they are integrated with organismal, taxonomic, and vouchering practices rather than used as stand-alone counting exercises.

Within the broader cluster, NSF also highlights several related competitions and pathways that applicants can use depending on their goals and scope. One is Revisionary Synthesis in Systematics (REVSYS), which encourages proposals that synthesize existing and newly generated species-level information into revisionary treatments and predictive classifications for particular organismal groups. REVSYS proposals can be submitted through either the Systematic Biology or Biodiversity Inventories programs, but they must be clearly labeled by placing "REVSYS" at the beginning of the project title. This mechanism is aimed at large, integrative revisions that pull together scattered knowledge, resolve taxonomic confusion, and deliver authoritative, usable systematic treatments.

In addition, the cluster references three special competitions that align closely with its mission. Partnership for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy (PEET) is a biennial competition designed to prevent the loss of taxonomic capacity by supporting monographic research on poorly known groups or groups where expertise is disappearing, training at least two new taxonomic experts, and developing web-based bioinformatics resources for taxonomy; its deadline falls in March of odd-numbered years. Planetary Biodiversity Inventories (PBI) is another biennial competition, intended to accelerate discovery by funding coordinated teams to complete a worldwide, species-level systematic inventory of a major organismal group; PBI projects are expected to fill collection gaps via fieldwork, produce descriptions and revisions, build web-searchable databases and interactive identification tools, analyze phylogenetic relationships, and deliver predictive classifications, with proposals due in January of even-numbered years and required to be global in scope. Assembling the Tree of Life (AToL) is an annual competition focused on constructing comprehensive phylogenetic frameworks that span all major organismal groups; proposals may target a particular taxonomic group or develop tools, methods, or theory that advance the Tree of Life mission.

Administratively, this opportunity is an NSF discretionary grant program in the Science and Technology and other Research and Development category (CFDA 47.074, Biological Sciences). At the time of the listed posting, the program anticipated around 26 awards with an estimated total funding level of roughly $22.8 million, and it did not require cost sharing or matching. Eligibility is described as unrestricted (open to any type of entity), subject to any clarifications in the official text. Unsolicited proposals for the standing programs are prepared according to the NSF Grant Proposal Guide (GPG). The notice included annual target dates (with examples listed as January and July target dates) but is marked as archived and replaced by a later solicitation, which matters mainly for historical reference; applicants would typically look to the most current NSF solicitation and deadlines for submission details.

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