The DIVERSITAS core projects all share a common goal: to understand the causes and consequences of biodiversity change. Each core project tackles this broad issue by facilitating research on specific aspects of the problem, for example, bioDISCOVERY aims to develop the scientific basis for monitoring, observing, understanding and predicting changes in the current levels of biodiversity; ecoSERVICES links changes in ecosystem structure and functioning to changes in ecosystem services and bioSUSTAINABILITY aims to understand the ecological, economic and social drivers of biodiversity loss. Cross-Cutting Networks are those topics that lend themselves particularly well to being tackled by the approaches employed by all three core projects. Networks that have been established are below:

Agriculture and biodiversity
Freshwater Biodiversity Network
Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment
Global Invasive Species Programme