About GMP
Large-Scale Sampling for Worldwide Biodiversity Assessments
Overview
Launched by the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (CBG) in 2012, the Global Malaise Program (GMP) has grown to more than 500 sampling sites across 48 countries. The program is a major step toward understanding how arthropod communities vary across space and time, and how they respond to environmental change.
Past efforts to include arthropods in large-scale terrestrial assessments were limited by two major barriers: habitat complexity, which made sampling difficult, and the challenge of identifying specimens in such diverse groups. GMP overcomes both by combining Malaise traps (tent-like structures that capture flying insects across habitats) with DNA barcoding, which uses sequence variation in a standardized gene fragment to rapidly and objectively distinguish species.
Together, this integrated approach has enabled high-throughput, cost-efficient biodiversity assessments on a global scale. This growing global dataset provides unprecedented temporal and spatial insight into arthropod diversity and distribution worldwide, and today GMP is a core part of an even larger effort: BIOSCAN.
BIOSCAN
Current Projects
BugQuest is a community science project that aims to study insect diversity across Canada. The program sent Malaise traps to over 400 schools and community sites in its first year and will continue into 2027. The samples are shipped back to the CBG and identified using metabarcoding. The project focuses on engaging students and community members to learn more about the insects in their area.
Beginning in early 2026, the SANParks project is a large-scale sampling project with 80+ traps across 21 national parks. The project aims to collect baseline data about arthropods in South Africa to improve their long term biodiversity monitoring framework.
Launched in 2025 in partnership with African Parks, this project placed 15 Malaise traps in 12 protected areas across 8 African countries, from the forests of Odzala-Kokoua in the Republic of Congo to the wetlands of Bangweulu in Zambia. Each trap samples for a full year, documenting arthropod diversity across savannas, forests and wetlands, many of them in ecoregions never sampled before.
Launching in November 2026, Ecuador GMP adds 43 new sites to GMP’s existing network in the country. Spanning 20 provinces, the sites stretch from coastal mangroves and dry forests, through Andean cloud forests and páramo grasslands, to the Amazon lowlands and the Galápagos Islands, sampling arthropod diversity across one of the world’s most biodiverse countries.
Since 2025, Australia BIOSCAN runs standardized Malaise trapping across eastern Australia, with 11 traps at 5 locations, from Royal National Park and the Blue Mountains to Brisbane and the forests of the New South Wales south coast. Each trap samples weekly for a full year, adding new Australian arthropod barcodes to the global reference library.
Project Outcomes
as of October 2025
48 COUNTRIES
521 TRAPS
13,509 SAMPLES PROCESSED
11,528,763 SPECIMENS ANALYZED
9,903,553 RECORDS WITH BINS
611,231 BINS
