Search publications of the members of the Royal Belgian institute of natural Sciences
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Ultraconserved elements-based phylogenomic systematics of the snake superfamily Elapoidea, with the description of a new Afro-Asian family
- The highly diverse snake superfamily Elapoidea is considered to be a classic example of ancient, rapid radiation. Such radiations are challenging to fully resolve phylogenetically, with the highly diverse Elapoidea a case in point. Previous attempts at inferring a phylogeny of elapoids produced highly incongruent estimates of their evolutionary relationships, often with very low statistical support. We sought to resolve this situation by sequencing over 4,500 ultraconserved element loci from multiple representatives of every elapoid family/subfamily level taxon and inferring their phylogenetic relationships with multiple methods. Concatenation and multispecies coalescent based species trees yielded largely congruent and well-supported topologies. Hypotheses of a hard polytomy were not retained for any deep branches. Our phylogenies recovered Cyclocoridae and Elapidae as diverging early within Elapoidea. The Afro-Malagasy radiation of elapoid snakes, classified as multiple subfamilies of an inclusive Lamprophiidae by some earlier authors, was found to be monophyletic in all analyses. The genus Micrelaps was consistently recovered as sister to Lamprophiidae. We establish a new family, Micrelapidae fam. nov., for Micrelaps and assign Brachyophis to this family based on cranial osteological synapomorphy. We estimate that Elapoidea originated in the early Eocene and rapidly diversified into all the major lineages during this epoch. Ecological opportunities presented by the post-Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event may have promoted the explosive radiation of elapoid snakes.
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Ancient pigs reveal a near-complete genomic turnover following their introduction to Europe.
- Archaeological evidence indicates that pig domestication had begun by ∼10,500 y before the present (BP) in the Near East, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) suggests that pigs arrived in Europe alongside farmers ∼8,500 y BP. A few thousand years after the introduction of Near Eastern pigs into Europe, however, their characteristic mtDNA signature disappeared and was replaced by haplotypes associated with European wild boars. This turnover could be accounted for by substantial gene flow from local European wild boars, although it is also possible that European wild boars were domesticated independently without any genetic contribution from the Near East. To test these hypotheses, we obtained mtDNA sequences from 2,099 modern and ancient pig samples and 63 nuclear ancient genomes from Near Eastern and European pigs. Our analyses revealed that European domestic pigs dating from 7,100 to 6,000 y BP possessed both Near Eastern and European nuclear ancestry, while later pigs possessed no more than 4\% Near Eastern ancestry, indicating that gene flow from European wild boars resulted in a near-complete disappearance of Near East ancestry. In addition, we demonstrate that a variant at a locus encoding black coat color likely originated in the Near East and persisted in European pigs. Altogether, our results indicate that while pigs were not independently domesticated in Europe, the vast majority of human-mediated selection over the past 5,000 y focused on the genomic fraction derived from the European wild boars, and not on the fraction that was selected by early Neolithic farmers over the first 2,500 y of the domestication process.
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Revision of the genus Baltoplana (Rhabdocoela: Schizorhynchia: Cheliplanidae) with the description of two new species
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Unraveling chromosomal inversions and their evolutionary dance in a wing polymorphic beetle
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Symbiotic interactions challenged by environmental stress in aquatic transitional habitats
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Comparison of the pollinator microbiome: management practices, altitude and sex as drivers for change
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The green heart of Africa, the Lomami Primer
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Evolution in the tides: unravelling adaptive strategies in Pogonus chalceus beetles
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Een speurtocht naar niet-inheemse soorten in het Galgeschoor en het Doeldok te Antwerpen
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Contribution to the knowledge of the fauna of the family Pyramidellidae Gray, 1840 (Mollusca, Gastropoda) on the islands of Saint Helena and Ascension
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Compilation of presentations at BICEpS colloquium 2018. Annexe to BICEpS Annual report 2018 – Reinforcing Belgian ICES People.
- 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 70 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. 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 2018 presents the genesis and first 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 demarche leading to the creation of the BICEpS community and activities conducted in 2018. The report contains the list of Belgian ICES members in 2018 with their membership to the different ICES working groups, and the results of the first BICEpS Colloquium organised on 14 November 2018 and hosted by RBINS in Brussels (outcome of a participatory discussion on the future of BICEpS, abstracts of communications presented and list of participants. The report is also published on ICES's website at http://ices.dk/community/groups/Documents/BICEPS/BICEPpS-Annual-Report-2018.pdf. 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/BICEpS-2018-Colloquium-Presentations.pdf
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Optimal timing of multiple investment decisions in a wood value chain: A real options approach
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Economic feasibility studies for Carbon Capture and Utilization technologies: a tutorial review
- Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) involves the capture and use of CO2 as a resource to create valuable products. The competitiveness of various CCU technologies has been investigated frequently resulting in a variety of economic feasibility studies and economic indicators. This study performs a tutorial review, in which practical guidance is given on the implementation of Techno-Economic Assessments (TEAs) for chemical CCU technologies. The tutorial review maps the differences in the methods and assumptions of economic feasibility studies for CCU technologies and advises how these studies can be improved in the future. A TEA framework, drafted by the CCU research community, is used as a benchmark in this review, to allow for objective comparisons between various economic feasibility studies. The four phases of an exhaustive TEA are (I) goal and scope, (II) data inventory, (III) calculation of indicators and (IV) interpretation. The tutorial review reveals that economic feasibility studies for chemical CCU technologies can and should be improved in various manners. Phases I and II are often skipped or incomplete. In Phase III, a very diverse indicator set is observed, which hampers comparability across CCU technologies. Phase IV, the interpretation of results, is often missing in the literature set or lacks thorough uncertainty and sensitivity analyses. The comparison with the TEA framework revealed the diversity in assumptions and methodological choices in the literature set. These findings suggest that future economic feasibility studies should be made in a more standardized way to improve both the quality and comparability of economic feasibility studies. Four improvements to the TEA framework are suggested: (i) focussing more on the impact of technical parameters in sensitivity analyses, (ii) adapting the assessment to the TRL of the technology, (iii) implementing ROA in the TEA and (iv) integrating an environmental assessment or LCA with the TEA. Further research is needed to investigate how Real Options Theory can be integrated into conventional TEA frameworks to analyse the investment decision in CCU technologies in a dynamic setting.
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Explaining Uncertainty Avoidance in Meciaprojects: Resource Constraints, Strategic Behaviour, or Institutions?
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Leasing out unused meeting room capacity to reduce future office space needs: A case study of The Hague, Netherlands
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The Role of Industrial and Market Symbiosis in Stimulating CO2 Emission Reductions
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Stepwise Investment in Circular Plastics Under the Presence of Policy Uncertainty
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Investment Decisions with Two-Factor Uncertainty
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Americardia lindamaesae spec. nov., a new cardiid from Ascension Island (Bivalvia, Cardiidae)
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The discovery of a new Fusitriton (Gastropoda, Cymatiidae) from deep waters of Tristan Da Cunha (southern Atlantic)
