Abstract The aim of this article is to describe a newly created open access database of archeological human remains collections from Flanders, Belgium. The MEMOR database (www.memor.be) was created to provide an overview of the current practices of loans, reburial, and the research potential of human skeletons from archeological sites currently stored in Flanders. In addition, the project aimed to provide a legal and ethical framework for the handling of human remains and was created around stakeholder involvement from anthropologists, geneticists, contract archeologists, the local, regional and national government agencies, local and national government, universities, and representatives of the major religions. The project has resulted in the creation of a rich database with many collections available for study. The database was created using the open-source Arches data management platform that is freely available for organizations worldwide to configure in accordance with their individual needs and without restrictions on its use. Each collection is linked to information about the excavation and the site the remains originate from, its size and time period. In addition, a research potential tab reveals whether any analyses were performed, and whether excavation notes are available with the assemblage. The database currently contains 742 collections, ranging in size from 1 to over 1000 individuals. New collections will continue to be added when new assemblages are excavated and studied. The database can also be expanded to include human remains collections from other regions and other material categories, such as archaeozoological collections.
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Echinoderms are marine water invertebrates that are represented by more than 7000 extant species, grouped in five classes and showing diverse morphologies (starfish, sea lilies, feather stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, brittle and basket stars). In an effort to further study their diversity, DNA barcodes (DNA fragments of the 5’ end of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene, COI) have been used to complement morphological examination in identifying evolutionary lineages. Although divergent clusters of COI sequences were reported to generally match morphological species delineations, they also revealed some discrepancies, suggesting overlooked species, ecophenotypic variation or multiple COI lineages within one species. Here, we sequenced COI fragments of 312 shallow-water echinoderms of the East Coast of South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal Province) and compared morphological identifications with species delimitations obtained with four methods that are exclusively based on COI sequences. We identified a total of 103 morphospecies including 18 that did not exactly match described species. We also report 46 COI sequences that showed large divergences (>5% p-distances) with those available to date and publish the first COI sequences for 30 species. Our analyses also identified discordances between morphological identifications and COI-based species delimitations for a considerable proportion of the morphospecies studied here (49/103). For most of them, further investigation is necessary to keep a sound connection between taxonomy and the growing importance of DNA-based research.
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