The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES; French: Conseil International pour l'Exploration de la Mer, CIEM) is an intergovernmental marine science organization that brings together the efforts and knowledge of 20 Member States, bordering the North Atlantic and the Arctic Circumpolar Zone, on physical oceanography, marine ecosystems and fisheries management. Nowadays, more than 80 Belgian scientists are directly involved in the work of the 150 bodies and expert groups of ICES, which gather the expertise of more than 1500 scientists yearly, totalling up to 5000 scientists from over 700 marine institutes and organizations over the years. This important and often voluntary dedication of Belgian scientists to the work of ICES deserves more visibility among the Belgian scientific community itself and to policy makers.This is, among others, why the BICEpS initiative was launched in 2018. BICEpS general aim is to offer a platform to the Belgian ICES community to get to know each other, to improve collaboration and share information, and to promote ICES to the wider scientific community in Belgium. BICEpS Annual report 2019 presents the second year of activity of this initiative created to reinforce Belgian ICES people. The report targets marine scientists, marine managers and policy makers. It presents the results of the initiative so far. The report contains the list of Belgian ICES members in 2019 with their membership to the different ICES working groups, and the results of the second BICEpS Colloquium organised on 2 December 2019 and hosted by ILVO in Ghent (Summary of the sessions, abstracts of communications presented and list of participants). The abstracts of the colloquium are supplemented by a separate annex published online which assembles the PowerPoint presentations of the colloquium accessible at http://ices.dk/community/groups/Documents/BICEPS/BICEpS19-PPT-presentations.pdf This report is accessible on the ICES website at http://ices.dk/community/groups/Pages/BICEpS.aspx
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RBINS Staff Publications 2020
In addition to the type species, Binkhorstia ubaghsii, which is fairly common in the upper part of the Nekum Member (Maastricht Formation) in the wider vicinity of Maastricht (the Netherlands) and Binkhorstia euglypha, which appears to be restricted to the overlying Meerssen Member of the same formation (uppermost Maastrichtian), a third member, B. desaegheri nov. sp., is recorded from the upper middle Santonian of the Campine area in north-east Belgium. The history of Binkhorstia is convoluted, serving as a prime example of how attempts to unravel the higher-level taxonomic position of late Mesozoic crabs may prove difficult. Over time, the genus has been referred to various families or subfamilies, either podotreme or putative eubrachyuran; here the new family Binkhorstiidae is placed in the superfamily Retroplumoidea. Binkhorstiids appear to have been a relatively short-lived endemic group that fell victim to Cretaceous‒Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary perturbations.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2024
Bioerosional marks are frequently recognized as indicators of the dynamic interactions between the organisms and their surrounding environments. In the fossil record, these structures are frequently manifest in the skeletal remains of vertebrates, being commonly associated to predation activity, scavenging, or post-mortem degradation processes. In the case of the turtles, their shells offer a distinctive substrate, exposed for the development of bioerosional processes throughout the organism life, unlike other vertebrate osseous structures. These bioerosions can indicate the type of habitat in which the turtles live, their behavioral patterns, and even their state of health. Sea turtles, as other marine vertebrates, have been extensively studied in the realms of the biology, evolution, and conservation. However, relatively scarce information is available regarding the pathologies and infectious diseases affecting their shells, especially when extinct taxa are analyzed. The aim of this study is to analyze the diverse types of bioerosional marks on the shells of two sea turtle individuals, attributable to taxa, from the Lutetian (middle Eocene) of Belgium. One of them corresponds to the shell of the holotype of Eochelone brabantica (IRSNB R 0001). Its carapace exhibits multiple erosive anomalies on several costal plates. The second specimen is a carapace of Puppigerus camperi (IRSNB R 0004). It displays different typologies of shell deviations, also of erosive character. The analyses of these specimens have been performed through both the detailed macroscopic examination and the study of the cross-sectional images provided by CT scanning in the case of Eochelone brabantica, and a 3D model obtained through a surface scanner for Puppigerus camperi. As a result, insights into the shell modifications of these two turtle individuals induced by various external agents have been provided, enhancing our understanding of the physical stressors affecting these organisms in ancient marine environments and the organisms responsible for these changes.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2025
