The rapid erosion of biodiversity is among the biggest challenges human society is facing. Concurrently, major efforts are in place to quantify changes in biodiversity, to understand the consequences for ecosystem functioning and human wellbeing, and to develop sustainable management strategies. Based on comprehensive bibliometric analyses covering 134,321 publications, we report systematic spatial biases in biodiversity-related research

To celebrate 2010 as the United Nations International Year of Biodiversity and the importance of sharing our knowledge of the diversity of the natural world, we present a cross journal thematic series of open access biodiversity research. This selection highlights leading research from the disciplines of genetics and evolution of species richness, to conservation and biodiversity informatics. BMC Ecology expands scope (BMC Ecology 2010, 10:16) BMC Ecology has always been open to a wide range of topics from biodiversity research and in this 2010