Search publications of the members of the Royal Belgian institute of natural Sciences
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Using Sea cucumbers to illustrate the basics of zoological nomenclature
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Two new species in the phyllophorid genus Massinium (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea) with redescription of Massinium magnum
- The recently erected phyllophorid genus Massinium Samyn & Thandar, 2003 hithertho held three species: the southern African endemics Massinium arthroprocessum (Thandar, 1989) and M. maculosum Samyn & Thandar, 2003 (type species), and the central Indo-Pacific M. magnum (Ludwig, 1882). Careful examination of the incomplete holotype of M. magnum and material assigned to this species from various museums allowed us to completely redescribe the type, supplement the description with information from entire voucher specimens, and recognise two species new to science, previously assigned to M. magnum. In addition, the diagnosis of Massinium is amended to also include Neothyonidium dissimilis Cherbonnier, 1988 from Madagascar. The six currently recognised congenerics are keyed.
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First record of the Apodid Sea Cucumber Anapta gracilis Semper, 1868 (Holothuroidea: Synaptidae) in the Gulf of Thailand.
- see pdf
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no Name, No Game
- No abstract
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Algal Taxonomy: a road to nowhere?
- The widespread view of taxonomy as an essentially retrogressive and outmoded science unable to cope with the current biodiversity crisis stimulated us to analyze the current status of cataloguing global algal diversity. Contrary to this largely pessimistic belief, species description rates of algae through time and trends in the number of active taxonomists, as revealed by the web resource AlgaeBase, show a much more positive picture. More species than ever before are being described by a large community of algal taxonomists. The lack of any decline in the rate at which new species and genera are described, however, is indicative of the large proportion of undiscovered diversity and bears heavily on any prediction of global algal species diversity and the time needed to catalogue it. The saturation of accumulation curves of higher taxa (family, order, and classes) on the other hand suggest that at these taxonomic levels most diversity has been discovered. This reasonably positive picture does not imply that algal taxonomy does not face serious challenges in the near future. The observed levels of cryptic diversity in algae, combined with the shift in methods used to characterize them, have resulted in a rampant uncertainty about the status of many older species. As a consequence, there is a tendency in phycology to move gradually away from traditional names to a more informal system whereby clade-, specimen- or strain-based identifiers are used to communicate biological information. Whether these informal names for species-level clades represent a temporary situation stimulated by the lag between species discovery and formal description, or an incipient alternative or parallel taxonomy, will be largely determined by how well we manage to integrate historical collections into modern taxonomic research. Additionally, there is a pressing need for a consensus about the organizational framework to manage the information about algal species names. An eventual strategy should preferably come out of an international working group that includes the various databases as well as the various phycological societies. In this strategy, phycologists should link up to major international initiatives that are currently being developed, such as the compulsory registration of taxonomic and nomenclatural acts and the introduction of Life Science Identifiers.
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The rediscovery of a collection of echinoderms, including two holotypes, in the Durban Natural Science Museum, South Africa.
- This paper reports on an orphaned collection of echinoderms housed at the Durban Natural Science Museum, South Africa. The collection includes holotypes of the South African endemic ophiuroid Asteroschema capensis Mortensen, 1925 [=Asteromorpha capensis (Mortensen, 1925)] according to Okanishi et al. (2013) and the South African endemic asteroid Anthenoides marleyi Mortensen, 1925. The holotype of the asteroid Hacelia superba var. capensis Mortensen, 1925 has not been found and is considered lost, whilst the holotype of Anthosticte pacei Mortensen, 1925 [=Tethyaster pacei (Mortensen, 1925)] is reported to be housed in the Zoological Museum Copenhagen, Denmark. The collection includes both wet and dry specimens of extant Asteroidea, Ophiuroidea, Echinoidea and Holothuroidea with Crinoidea being absent. Holothuroidea were excluded from examinations due to lack of locality data. In addition, Plococidaris verticillata (de Lamarck, 1816) is a new distribution record for South Africa. This paper gives new accession numbers of the specimens and the only photographic record of this collection.
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New or noteable records of brittle stars (Echinodermata: Ophiuroidea) from South Africa.
- Ophiuroid research in South Africa has not kept pace with global taxonomic research with the last major taxonomic review of the group being published in 1976. This paper documents all new records of Ophiuroidea from South Africa since (and including) 1977. These records originate from specimens housed in five zoological collections, from photographic records and from reports published in the non-taxonomic literature. A short review of the history of ophiuroid taxonomy in South Africa is also given and for each new record, key references, distribution, ecology, additional notes and, where possible, photographs, are presented. This has resulted in an additional 24 species being recorded within the mainland Exclusive Economic Zone of South Africa, elevating the total known number of ophiuroid species reported in the region to 137.
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De evolutie van evolutiedenken: van Aristotles tot de moderne synthese
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Output Workshop Climate Scenarios
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Ontwerp van gemotiveerde conclusie over de aanvraag van DC Industrial NV, Alzagri NV en Belmagri NV voor de exploitatie en exploratie van zand in de zeegebieden onder de rechtsbevoegdheid van België, voorgelegd aan de Raadgevende Commissie
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CREST Voortgangsverslag mei 2019. Prepared for IWT
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Sand and sustainability : finding new solutions for environmental governance of global sand resources
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Monitoring of the impact of the extraction of marine aggregates, in casu sand, in the zone of the Hinder banks. Data report Year 2017.
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Monitoring of the impact of marine aggregates, in casu sand, in the zone of the Hinderbanks. Scientific Report – January-December 2018
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The impact of sand extraction on the wave height near the Belgian coast.
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Sawflies of Ethiopian and Ecuadorian highlands in a Chemo-ecological perspective
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De berberschijf Eldonia berbera
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Sex in the city: uncovering sex-specific management of equine resources from prehistoric times to the modern period in France
- Sex identification from fragmentary archeozoological assemblages is particularly challenging in the Equid family, including for horses, donkeys and their hybrids. This limitation has precluded in-depth investigations of sex-ratio variation in various temporal, geographic and social contexts. Recently, shallow DNA sequencing has offered an economical solution to equine sex determination, even in environments where DNA preservation conditions is not optimal. In this study, we applied state-of-the-art methods in ancient DNA-based equine sex determination to 897 osseous remains in order to assess whether equal proportions of males and females could be found in a range of archeological contexts in France. We found Magdalenian horse hunt not focused on isolated bachelors, and Upper Paleolithic habitats and natural traps equally balancing sex ratios. In contrast, Iron Age sacrificial rituals appeared to have been preferentially oriented to male horses and this practice extended into the Roman Period. During Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Modern Period, cities emerged as environments largely dominated by horse males. This strong sex-bias was considerably reduced, and sometimes even absent, in various rural contexts. Combined with previous archaeozoological work and textual evidence, our results portray an urban economy fueled by adult, often old, males, and rural environments where females and subadults of both sexes were maintained to sustain production demands.
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Historical management of equine resources in France from the Iron Age to the Modern Period
- Alongside horses, donkeys and their first-generation hybrids represent members of the Equidae family known for their social, economic and symbolic importance in protohistoric and historical France. However, their relative importance and their respective roles in different regions and time periods are difficult to assess based on textual, iconographic and archaeological evidence. This is both due to incomplete, partial and scattered historical sources and difficulties to accurately assign fragmentary archaeological remains at the proper taxonomic level. DNA- based methods, however, allow for a robust identification of the taxonomic status of ancient equine osseous material from minimal sequence data. Here, we leveraged shallow ancient DNA sequencing and the dedicated Zonkey computational pipeline to obtain the first baseline distribution for horses, mules and donkeys in France from the Iron Age to the Modern period. Our collection includes a total of 873 ancient specimens spanning 128 ubiquitous and the most dominant species identified, our dataset reveals the importance of mule breeding during Roman times, especially between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE (Common Era), where they represented between 20.0% and 34.2% of equine assemblages. In contrast, donkeys were almost absent from northern France as-semblages during the whole Roman period, but replaced mules in rural and urban commercial and economic centers from the early Middle Ages. Our work also identified donkeys of exceptional size during Late Antiquity, which calls for a deep reassessment of the true morphological space of past equine species. This study confirmed the general preference toward horses throughout all time periods investigated but revealed dynamic manage-ment strategies leveraging the whole breadth of equine resources in various social, geographic and temporal contexts.
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Waardering van de insectenresten van een vloerniveau uit een WOI-schuilplaats in de Oude Bellewaerdestraat te Ieper (West-Vlaanderen)
