Report of the Working Group on Biodiversity Science (WGBIODIV)

Biodiversity is an increasingly important element of ICES’ work, and is one of the research topics of strategic importance identified in the ICES Science Plan. The Euro-pean Commission’s (EC) recent Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) high-lights the importance of marine biodiversity, and so requests for information from ICES on the monitoring, assessment and integration of biodiversity information will undoubtedly increase in the future. A range of ICES Expert Groups are currently in-volved in various aspects of marine biodiversity, and WGBIODIV aims to provide the ICES community with an improved capacity to coordinate, integrate and synthesise biodiversity information.