Search publications of the members of the Royal Belgian institute of natural Sciences
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La dégradation du littoral du lac Tanganyika au Burundi : approche multidisciplinaire
- Une étude multidisciplinaire a analysé la dégradation des habitats du lac Tanganyika sur le littoral du Burundi. Plusieurs embouchures de rivières et la rive du lac ont été échantillonnées près de la ville de Bujumbura et dans la partie sud du pays et ceci pour une analyse à plusieurs niveaux : la physico-chimie, les diatomées, les macrophytes, les macro-invertébrés et les poissons. Les résultats obtenus sur la base de ces indicateurs démontrent que la rivière Kanyosha a plus de potentiel en qualité écologique, tandis que la rivière Muha et Ntahangwa semblent les plus polluées. La biodiversité est plus riche au sud (surtout les affluents Kamango, Murembwe et Rwaba). Outre la typologie des sites échantillonnés, tous les indices démontrent une dégradation générale des affluents du milieu côtier, et de manière plus accentuée au nord du lac, aux alentours de Bujumbura. Cette étude a pour objectif d’alarmer la communauté scientifique et les décideurs au sujet de la dégradation progressive du lac, et d’émettre la nécessité de la mise en place d’un système de surveillance sur la dynamique de la biodiversité et la qualité de l’eau du Lac Tanganyika basés sur l’étude des bio-indicateurs comme base de décision et de gestion afin d’atténuer et arrêter la pollution et la dégradation alarmante du Lac.
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Local knowledge of the impact of uncontrolled fires on ecosystem services: a case study in the Pendjari Biosphere Reserve in Benin
- Ecosystem services are fundamental to people and are undergoing many threats such as uncontrolled fire. Local knowledge has been widely used to guide management decisions for plant biodiversity. Therefore, we assessed the knowledge of the people of Pendjari Biosphere Reserve (PBR) on the impact of fire on ecosystem services (ES). A semi-structured questionnaire with three fire impact levels (no, low and high) was used to interview 150 randomly selected households in four ethnic groups. The generalised linear model (GLM) was performed on the relative frequency of quotations to assess the effect of ethnic group, age and sex for each impact level of fire on ES and also to test the interaction among the considered factors. The local people reported that uncontrolled fire causes damage to many provisioning ES. The local knowledge concerning the impact of fire on ES was affected significantly (p < 0.0001) by ethnic group, age and sex irrespective of the impact level of fire on ES. Moreover, there was no significant interaction among the considered factors. The studied factors are benchmarks to be integrated into awareness and preservation measures of ES to mitigate the impact of uncontrolled fire practices in the study area.
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Communicating climate change and biodiversity loss with local populations: exploring communicative utopias in eight transdisciplinary case studies
- Climate change and biodiversity loss trigger policies targeting and impacting local communities worldwide. However, research and policy implementation often fail to sufficiently consider community responses and to involve them. We present the results of a collective self-assessment exercise for eight case studies of communications with regard to climate change or biodiversity loss between project teams and local communities. We develop eight indicators of good stakeholder communication, reflecting the scope of Verran’s (2002) concept of postcolonial moments as a communicative utopia. We demonstrate that applying our indicators can enhance communication and enable community responses. However, we discover a divergence between timing, complexity and (introspective) effort. Three cases qualify for postcolonial moments, but scrutinising power relations and genuine knowledge co-production remain rare. While we verify the potency of various instruments for deconstructing science, their sophistication cannot substitute trust building and epistemic/transdisciplinary awareness. Lastly, we consider that reforming inadequate funding policies helps improving the work in and with local communities.
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Guide pour l'évaluation des services écosystémiques dans les réserves de biosphère africaines : vers un développement durable
- Le rapport de 2020 de « l’évaluation mondiale de la biodiversité et des services écosystémiques » de la Plateforme intergouvernementale scientifique et politique sur la biodiversité et les services écosystémiques (IPBES) indique que la nature et ses contributions aux populations jouent un rôle important non seulement pour la santé de la planète, mais aussi pour atteindre les objectifs de développement durable. Il souligne notamment la nécessité d'améliorer la compréhension des interactions entre les services écosystémiques et les objectifs et cibles visant à mettre fin à la pauvreté et à la faim, et à améliorer le bienêtre des populations. Les services écosystémiques, nous le savons, englobent toutes les contributions de la nature aux humains. Il peut s'agir de matières premières telles que l'eau ou le bois, mais aussi de véritables services comme la pollinisation des cultures ou la séquestration du carbone. Être capable d'évaluer ces services écosystémiques est, pour les communautés, une autre étape dans la compréhension de la région dans laquelle elles vivent et de la manière de vivre durablement, en harmonie avec leur environnement direct. Pour la première fois, un manuel spécifique et convivial consacré à l'évaluation des services écosystémiques adapté au contexte des réserves de biosphère africaines a été créé pour les gestionnaires de réserves de biosphère et pour les décideurs. En comblant une lacune dans la communauté de l'Homme et de la Biosphère et au-delà, ce manuel fournira à ses lecteurs les outils et les connaissances nécessaires pour engager leurs communautés à atteindre les objectifs de développement durable.
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2nd international conference on biodiversity in the Congo Basin
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Generalized changes of benthic communities after construction of wind farms in the southern North Sea
- Over the last years, the development of offshore renewable energy installations such as offshore wind farms led to an increasing number of man-made structures in marine environments. Since 2009, benthic impact monitoring programs were carried out in wind farms installed in the southern North Sea. We collated and analyzed data sets from three major monitoring programs. Our analysis considered a total of 2849 sampling points converted to a set of biodiversity response metrics. We analyzed biodiversity changes related to the implementation of offshore wind farms and generalized the correlation of these changes with spatial and temporal patterns. Our results demonstrate that depth, season and distance to structure (soft-bottom community) consistently determined di- versity indicators and abundance parameters, whereas the age and the country affiliation were significantly related to some but not all indices. The water depth was the most important structuring factor for fouling communities while seasonal effects were driving most of the observed changes in soft-sediment communities. We demonstrate that a meta-analysis can provide an improved level of understanding of ecological patterns on large- scale effects of anthropogenic structures on marine biodiversity, which were not visible in single monitoring studies. We believe that meta-analyses should become an indispensable tool for management of offshore wind farm effects in the future, particularly in the view of the foreseen development of offshore renewable energies. This might lead to a better picture and more comprehensive view on potential alterations. However, this requires a modern open-source data policy and data management, across institutions and across national borders.
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Goniatietenkerkhof Lompret fini
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Frasnian cephalopods from the newly discovered Carrière de Lompret section, Lompret, Belgium
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Nautiloid turnover across the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary: Chixculub impact, Deccan volcanism and Europe as key?
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La mort des ammonites, délice turc : quatre nouveaux sites de la limite Crétacé/Tertiaire documentant deux faunes d'ammonoïdes finmaastrichtiennes très différentes et contemporaines du volcanisme du Deccan
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A Step Towards Accurate Integrated Monitoring of The Sinking Zones in the Coastal Area of Antwerp Due to Possible Hydrogeological and Geomechanical Processes
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A Summary Review Based on Case Studies of the Challenges Related to the Comparison of Displacements Measured by PS-InSAR and Simulated by Geomechanical Coupled to Groundwater Models.
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Difficulties arising when PS-InSAR displacement measurements are compared to results from geomechanical and groundwater flow computations
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Subsidence Evolution of Antwerp Region, Belgium over 77 Years, Using Historical Levelling and GNSS Data and Recent Persistent Scatterers Interferometry Observations
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Revision of the Eurybrachidae (XV). The Oriental genus Purusha Distant, 1906 with two new species and a key to the genera of Eurybrachini (Hemiptera: Fulgoromorpha: Eurybrachidae)
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Grasping ecological opportunities: not one but five paedophagous species of Haplochromis (Teleostei: Cichlidae) in the Lake Edward system
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Paropeas achatinaceum (Pfeiffer, 1846) and other alien Subuline and Opeatine land snails in European greenhouses (Gastropoda, Achatinidae)
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Extension of the phasmid genus Presbistus to Cambodia with a new species and notes on genitalia and captive breeding (Phasmida, Aschiphasmatidae, Aschiphasmatinae)
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Brain evolution of early placental mammals: the impact of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction on the the neurosensory system of our distant relatives
- The end-Cretaceous mass extinction, 66 million years ago, profoundly reshaped the biodiversity of our planet. After likely originating in the Cretaceous, placental mammals (species giving live birth to well-developed young) survived the extinction and quickly diversified in the ensuing Paleocene. Compared to Mesozoic species, extant placentals have advanced neurosensory abilities, enabled by a proportionally large brain with an expanded neocortex. This brain construction was acquired by the Eocene, but its origins, and how its evolution relates to extinction survivorship and recovery, are unclear, because little is known about the neurosensory systems of Paleocene species. We used high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scanning to build digital brain models in 29 extinct placentals (including 23 from the Paleocene). We added these to data from the literature to construct a database of 98 taxa, from the Jurassic to the Eocene, which we assessed in a phylogenetic context. We find that the Phylogenetic Encephalization Quotient (PEQ), a measure of relative brain size, increased in the Cretaceous along branches leading to Placentalia, but then decreased in Paleocene clades (taeniodonts, phenacodontids, pantodonts, periptychids, and arctocyonids). Later, during the Eocene, the PEQ increased independently in all crown groups (e.g., euarchontoglirans and laurasiatherians). The Paleocene decline in PEQ was driven by body mass increasing much more rapidly after the extinction than brain volume. The neocortex remained small, relative to the rest of the brain, in Paleocene taxa and expanded independently in Eocene crown groups. The relative size of the olfactory bulbs, however, remained relatively stable over time, except for a major decrease in Euarchontoglires and some Eocene artiodactyls, while the petrosal lobules (associated with eye movement coordination) decreased in size in Laurasiatheria but increased in Euarchontoglires. Our results indicate that an enlarged, modern-style brain was not instrumental to the survival of placental mammal ancestors at the end-Cretaceous, nor to their radiation in the Paleocene. Instead, opening of new ecological niches post-extinction promoted the diversification of larger body sizes, while brain and neocortex sizes lagged behind. The independent increase in PEQ in Eocene crown groups is related to the expansion of the neocortex, possibly a response to ecological specialization as environments changed, long after the extinction. Funding Sources Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, European Research Council Starting Grant, National Science Foundation, Belgian Science Policy Office, DMNS No Walls Community Initiative.
