On April 25, the citizen science event BioBlitz 2025 took place, uniting young and old, experts and enthusiasts, in a special initiative to study the biodiversity of Borisova Garden. T-shirts, notebooks, magnifying glasses, and various tools for collecting invertebrates, along with many smiles, welcomed the students and pupils who joined the fieldwork.

The initiative was organized in partnership between BgBOL, the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IBER-BAS), and the Biodiversity Genomics Europe project. The goal was to bring together young enthusiasts and experienced specialists to exchange knowledge and work side by side in the field.

Prof. Vlada Peneva and Dr. Iliya Gyonov explained to the young participants how the platform iNaturalist works - a global citizen science network where observations of various organisms are collected and identified by experts. They emphasized the importance of genetic research and the creation of reference libraries to facilitate species identification.

Specialists in invertebrate animals from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the National Museum of Natural History, the University of Forestry, Sofia University, and the Agricultural University of Plovdiv participated in the event, among them Dr. Ivaylo Dedov, Prof. Pavel Stoev, Assoc. Prof. Hristo Delchev, and many others.

At the start of the day, Dr. Ivaylo Dedov introduced the fifth-grade pupils to their scientific task, explaining the concept of "species" and what kinds of organisms they would be searching for during the expedition.

The event was part of a larger project – "Invertebrate fauna of Bulgaria and adjacent regions - DNA-based barcoding of under-represented in refrence libraries taxa". So far, samples have been collected from Bulgaria, Albania, North Macedonia, and Greece, with over 700 species submitted for sequencing, representing a significant contribution to regional science.