Report of the Working Group on Biodiversity Science (WGBIODIV)

Biodiversity is an increasingly important element of ICES’ work, and was identified in the ICES Science Plan as a research topic of strategic importance. The Marine Strat-egy Framework Directive (MSFD) highlights the importance of marine biodiversity, and so requests for information from ICES on the monitoring, assessment and inte-gration of biodiversity information will likely increase in the future. Although a range of ICES Expert Groups are involved in various aspects of marine biodiversity, WGBIODIV aims to provide the ICES community with an improved capacity to co-ordinate, integrate and synthesise biodiversity information.