The National Museum of Natural History, Sofia took part in the Sofia Science Festival

By tradition, the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia took part in the Sofia Science Festival, which took place from May 14 to 17, 2026. The museum set a thematic stand, which this year was dedicated to invasive alien species of insects.

The museum team with entomologists Assoc. Prof. Nikolay Simov and Dr Svetlozara Kazandzhieva, together with colleagues from the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research and the University of Forestry in Sofia, had prepared various games for children and adults, with which they learned what invasive alien species of insects are, how to recognize them and what we can do to prevent their unwanted spread. Most often, invasive alien species of insects are transported outside their natural habitats unintentionally by people with plants, “hitchhiking” with cars, trucks and cargo, even with hand luggage. The problem is becoming increasingly relevant with the extremely wide spread of these species in recent years in populated areas.

Anyone interested can participate in our online survey “Urban Invaders” until the end of the year.

With a presentation on the topic “From Natural Systems to Genomic Trees: What Evolutionary Trees Really Tell Us” Assoc. Prof. Feodor Konstantinov participated in the festival program. He briefly presented his recent work on the plant bug subfamily Phylinae (Miridae), a lineage of more than 2 000 predominantly host-specific species distributed worldwide. The scientist’s main message was how our understanding of evolutionary history has progressed from early “natural systems” through cladistics to phylogenomics, what evolutionary trees can legitimately tell us, and where common intuitions about them go astray. Tree thinking does not replace other ways of understanding biology, but it provides the historical dimension without which present diversity cannot be fully explained.

Funding for this study was provided by the Bulgarian National Science Fund project “Exploring the evolution of the plant bug subfamily Phylinae (Insecta, Hemiptera, Miridae): insights from phylogenetic reconstructions, host associations, and distributional patterns” (KP-06-PN71/13, BG-175467353-2023-130067), led by Assoc. Prof. Nikolay Simov.