Search publications of the members of the Royal Belgian institute of natural Sciences
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Water condition of the Senne river in late medieval Brussels (Belgium)
- Within the historic center of Brussels, excavations on a surface of almost 6000 m2 revealed the well preserved remains of a medieval port on the Senne river. This watercourse is inextricably linked with the origin and development of the city. Continuous occupancy at this location is documented from the 10th century onwards. The banks of the river were gradually built in the 12th century and in the 14th-15th century the river was canalised and provided with a boat dock. The Senne river played an important role in the local social and economic development of Brussels. A large amount of archaeological artefacts, including numerous animal remains, have been collected by hand and from sediment samples taken from the east bank and the riverbed. Preliminary results show how the Senne river acted as a waste bin for urban rubbish. This poster will mainly focus on the animal materials from the residues of the sieved sediment samples. These yielded many shells of local freshwater molluscs, which are informative for the river conditions. In addition, the protective cases of the larvae of caddisflies (Trichoptera) have been found. Caddisflies are a group of insects with aquatic larvae and terrestrial adults. The larvae of many species use silk to make protective cases, which are often strengthened with gravel, sand, twigs, plant fragments or other debris. While the cases of many of these species are not identifiable up to genus or species level, the presence of Brachycentrus subnubilus Curtis, 1834 has been established with certainty in the late medieval riverbed of the Senne. The importance of this find is discussed.
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Early Byzantine fish consumption and trade revealed by archaeoichthyology and isotopic analysis at Sagalassos, Turkey
- We document the dietary and economic role of fish at Sagalassos, a town in ancient Pisidia (southwest Turkey) for the Early Byzantine period (c. 550 – 700 CE) through a detailed analysis of animal bones and stable isotopes. The role of fish in the diet is quantified, for the first time, based on large samples of sieved remains retrieved during the excavation of a number of spaces in an urban residence. The table and kitchen refuse from the mansion shows that fish was a regular part of the diet. However, past isotopic work focused on human individuals excavated in the city’s necropolises, slightly postdating the faunal remains examined, did not reflect this consumption of aquatic food. The studied assemblage comprises at least 12 different fish taxa, including five marine species, a Nilotic fish and six Anatolian freshwater species. Since the origin of the freshwater fishes could not be unambiguously determined by zoogeography alone, we analyzed carbon, nitrogen and sulphur stable isotope ratios in archaeological fish bones from Sagalassos as well as in bones of modern fish collected at different sites in Turkey. We show that most freshwater fish, i.e., all cyprinid species, came from Lake Eğirdir. No evidence was found for fish from the local Aksu River basin. The exact origin of pike, which account for 3% of all freshwater fish, could not be directly determined due to a shortage of modern comparative data. Using the data obtained on the provenance of the fish, the ancient trade routes possibly used in the Early Byzantine period are reconstructed using a combination of archaeological, numismatic and historical data on past commercial relations.
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3D subsurface characterisation of the Belgian Continental Shelf: a new voxel modelling approach
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Models of the Belgian coastal zone at RBINS
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Workshop on scoping of physical pressure layers causing loss of benthic habitats D6C1– methods to operational data products (WKBEDLOSS).
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Transnational and integrated long-term marine exploitation strategies
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Étude anthropologique du sarcophage F40 du château d’Hélécine (ancienne abbaye des Prémontrés)
- Etude du squelette mis au jour dans le sarcophage découvert lors des fouilles préventives dans l'enceinte du chateau d'Hélécine (BW)
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Des corps byzantins dans les dépotoirs romains : trois dépôts mortuaires non conventionnels dans le sanctuaire de Pluton à Hiérapolis de Phrygie (Turquie)
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Validating a biophysical dispersal model with the early life-history traits of common sole (Solea solea L.)
- Larval dispersal and juvenile survival are crucial in determining variation in recruitment, stock size and adult distribution of commercially important fish. This study investigates the dispersal of early-life stages of common sole (Solea solea L.) in the southern North Sea, both empirically and through modeling. Age at different life-history events of juvenile flatfish sampled along the coasts of Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom in 2013, 2014 and 2016, was determined through the counting of daily growth rings in the otoliths. Juveniles captured between August and October were estimated to be on average 140 days old with an average pelagic larval duration of 34 days. The hatching period was estimated between early April and mid-May followed by arrival and settlement in the nurseries between May and mid-June. Growth rates were higher off the Belgian coast than in the other nursery areas, especially in 2013, possibly due to a post-settlement differentiation. Empirical pelagic larval duration and settlement distributions were compared with the LARVAE&CO larval dispersal model, which combines local hydrodynamics in the North Sea with sole larval behavior. Yearly predicted and observed settlement matched partially, but the model estimated a longer pelagic phase. The observations fitted even better with the modelled average (1995–2015) distribution curves. Aberrant results for the small juvenile sole sampled along the UK coast in March 2016, led to the hypothesis of a winter disruption in the deposition of daily growth rings, potentially related to starvation and lower food availability. The similarities between measured and modelled distribution curves cross-validated both types of estimations and accredited daily ageing of juveniles as a useful method to calibrate biophysical models and to understand early-life history of fish, both important tools in support of efficient fisheries management strategies.
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A proposed solution to a lengthy dispute: what is Leptinaria (uni)lamellata (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Achatinidae)?
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Zaden- en vruchtenonderzoekvan de zwarte lagen op de site Steenstraat / H. Mausstraat in Brussel.
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Economic plants from medieval and post-medieval Brussels (Belgium), an overview of the archaeobotanical records.
- Archaeobotanical research in the city centre of Brussels is still in its infancy. However, the increasing amount of carpological data collected during the last two decades permits a first review. In this paper a synthesis of identified seeds and fruits of economic plants from ten sites in Brussels is presented. It comprises data from 53 archaeological features, dated between the 8th and 20th century. The majority of the remains are preserved through waterlogging and were found during archaeological rescue excavations in the Senne alluvial valley. Charred remains were regularly found as well, but in smaller quantities. They are the most abundantly identified remains in the topographically higher parts of Brussels. Some mineralized plant remains are also determined, mainly found in cesspits. Diachronic and local differences in the archaeobotanical assemblages are discussed. Plant remains from the pre-urban phase (before 1200 AD) show a variety of different cereal species and shed light on some locally cultivated pulses, vegetables, fruits and kitchen herbs. In the late medieval phase (13th e15th c.) the economic plant spectrum enlarges, with exotic imports from Africa, Asia and southern Europe. From the 17th century onwards introductions from America appear.
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How whales used to filter: exceptionally preserved baleen in a Miocene cetotheriid
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A heavyweight early whale pushes the boundaries of vertebrate morphology
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Advances in high-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions using growth experiments, age modelling and clumped isotope analyses
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Cirripedes (Thoracica, Crustacea) from the Maastrichtian of Kalaat Senan, Tunisia
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Archeobotanische resten van verversactiviteiten en textielbewerking uit laatmiddeleeuwse waterlopen, recente vondsten uit Brussel en Mechelen (Br. & Antw.)
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Continuity in intestinal parasite infection in Aalst (Belgium) from the medieval to the early modern period (12th-17th centuries)
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The Freshwater Animal Diversity Assessment (FADA): a taxonomic backbone for global biodiversity databases
- Koen Martens works at the Royal Belgian Institute of natural Sciences (Brussels, Belgium). He is guest professor at the UGent and visiting professor at the State University of Maringá (Brazil). His research interests are in aquatic ecology and evolutionary biology. He is editor in chief of Hydrobiologia since 2003. Freshwater covers less than 1% of the Earth’s surface, but 10% of all animals occur only in freshwaters, a discrepancy known as the “paradox of freshwater”. Several global data repositories (such as GBIF) document extant freshwater biodiversity, but require reliable taxonomic backbones. Currently, FADA (created by Koen in 2005) groups more than 125 thousand species and 11 thousand genera of freshwater animals. However, taxonomy is a living scientific discipline, where new taxa are being described and existing taxa are being placed in new taxonomic positions. infraFADA, a three-year BELSPO project, will develop FADA into a research infrastructure that serves as taxonomic backbone for a variety of global biodiversity databases.
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Multiple genetic species in a halophilic non-marine ostracod (Crustacea)
- The discovery of animal genetic (mostly also cryptic) species has known an exponential increase since molecular techniques became available. Also in non-marine ostracods (small, bivalved crustaceans with an excellent fossil record), several morphospecies have been shown to comprise several genetic species. Here, we screen 13 populations from Central Europe and the circum-Mediterranean region of the halophilic continental ostracod species Heterocypris salina with DNA sequences from a mitochondrial (COI) and a nuclear (28S) marker. We apply four species delimitation methods to show that this nominal species consists of four genetic species in both DNA datasets, and that these two sets of genetic species show mitonuclear discordance. Most investigated specimens belonged to one of these four genetic species. There was no clear correlation between geographic and genetic distances, but we found that, apart from historical processes, environmental factors such as ecoregion, seasonality and salinity might have been important drivers shaping discrete genetic diversity. Following the palaeontological literature, the H. salina species cluster is at least 11–9 Myr old.
