This year, the Bergey's Manual Trust held its annual meeting in Salamanca, Spain, a UNESCO World Heritage city and home to one of the oldest universities in Europe. The meeting was co-organized and held in conjunction with the 20th edition of the TAXON conference, the Group Meeting on Taxonomy, Phylogeny, and Biodiversity, from September 26-30, 2024. The program of XX TAXON highlighted the latest research in taxonomy and biodiversity, featuring presentations from trustees as keynote speakers. The event received local media coverage from Comunicación USAL and Salamanca 24horas. During the meeting, Dr. Francisco Salvà Serra received the 2024 Research Award in Taxonomy, Phylogeny, and Diversity for his thesis, "Bacterial Whole-Genome Sequencing for Establishment of Reference Sequences, Comparative Genomics, Biomarker Discovery, and Characterization of Novel Taxa."

The Bergey's Manual Trust met for its annual trust meeting in China during the Fifth Meeting of Bergey's International Society for Microbial Systematics (BISMiS) in Guangzhou, China on November 6-9, 2023. The Bergey's Manual Trust was a co-organizer for the meeting.

At the meeting, the Trust also presented its Bergey Award and Bergey Medal. Markus Göker received the Bergey Award, which is given to recognize outstanding contributions to bacterial taxonomy. Göker is head of the phylogenomics group at the Leibniz Institute DSMZ and secretary of the Judicial Commission of the International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes. Barny Whitman, an emeritus professor of microbiology of the University of Georgia and who has been involved in Bergey's Manual and Bergey's International Society over the years, received the Bergey Medal. The Bergey Medal is awarded to recognize outstanding and life-long contributions to the systematics of Bacteria and Archaea.

The Genome Taxonomy Database (GTDB) provides a phylogenetically consistent and rank normalized taxonomy for Bacteria and Archaea. The Taxonomy Tree viewer on GTDB website now includes a filter to show linking to the corresponding chapters in Bergey’s Manual of Systematics of Archaea and Bacteria which can be accessed using your institution’s subscription.

We welcome four new members to the Bergey’s Trust Board of Trustees: Maria Chuvochina (secretary), David R. Arahal, Stephanus N. Venter, and Iain Sutcliffe. Maria is a principal taxonomy curator of the Genome Taxonomy Database (GTDB) at the University of Queensland. David is a Professor of Microbiology at the University of Valencia and studies a variety of culturable microorganisms and is active in the introduction of comparative genomics as a routine method for classifying microorganisms. Stephanus is a Professor at the University of Pretoria where he studies bacterial evolution, systematics, and diversity. Iain is a Professor at Northumbria University and was Chair of the International Committee for Systematics of Prokaryotes (2017-2023); he is primarily focusing on understanding cell envelope diversity and its role in bacterial evolution. Learn more about the Board of Trustees here.