Search publications of the members of the Royal Belgian institute of natural Sciences
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Ant communities in recently restored dune grassland ecosystems in Belgium (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
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First record of the sharpshooter leafhopper genus Spinctogonia Breddin, 1901 in Vietnam (Hemiptera: Membracoidea: Cicadellidae)
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Extending Our Scientific Reach in Arboreal Ecosystems for Research and Management
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Etude carpologique du comblement médiéval (14e-15e siècle) de la rivière la Senne à Bruxelles – résultats préliminaires
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Exemple d’interdisciplinarité en Région bruxelloise : les latrines du Café Greenwich à Bruxelles
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Le Moustier 1 Neandertal – The discovery of two new sets of casts, 3D reconstruction and comparison with original fossils
- The postcranial skeleton of the Le Moustier 1 Neandertal was severely damaged and burnt at the end of the Second World War. A series of plaster casts were realized on the skeleton before it was destroyed. Five casts are already known to be in existence. This study brings to light two more sets of casts which were recently discovered in Belgium. One set is from the Louis Deroubaix Museum (LDM) and the other set is from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS). The casts at the LDM were processed by Computed Tomography and three-dimensional models were produced. Measurements were taken both virtually and physically on all available postcranial bones from both LDM and RBINS casts. These measurements were then compared with previously published measurements taken on the original bones and the other available casts. There were no statistical differences between measurements on the original fossils and other existing casts and the physical and digitised casts from LDM and RBINS. The discovery of these new Le Moustier 1 casts is interesting because the original bones of the Neandertal juvenile Le Moustier 1 were destroyed and pre-adolescent Neandertals are not frequently found in the paleoanthropological record. Virtual copies of these casts are now freely available to other researchers and the public.
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HOME project and the creation of an ethical policy – two Belgian initiatives
- Summary Background Starting in December 2019, the “HOME: Human Remains Origin(s) Multidisciplinary Evaluation” project has been granted funding for a duration of 2 years, focusing on historical collections of human remains in a network of seven institutional partners. Through the BRAIN-be 2.0 Pillar 2 “Heritage science”, call, the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) provided funding for Provenance research. The call “Heritage Science” concerns scientific research in support of the federal – scultural, scientific and historical – heritage and in particular that in Belgian Federal Scientific Institutions (FSIs). Objectives and expected results The HOME project will result in a multidisciplinary evaluation of the historical collections of human remains in Belgium, particularly in the FSIs. The deliverables of the project include reports on the collections in the different institutions detailing the inventories. The reports will also advise on how to best manage the diverse human remains collections in Belgium as well as propose management scenarios in response to existing and future requests of repatriation. There is also no best practice in Belgium on how to manage human remains collections. As a separate initiative but with parallel aims of the HOME project, an independent group from the Royal Museum of Art and History (RMAH) is establishing a Belgian policy about the study, preservation and exhibition of human remains in a museum context.
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Some comments on “Friend or Foe? Large canid remains from Pavlovian sites and their archaeozoological context”, a paper by Wilczyński et al. (2020)
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A tardigrade in Dominican amber
- Tardigrades are a diverse group of charismatic microscopic invertebrates that are best known for their ability to survive extreme conditions. Despite their long evolutionary history and global distribution in both aquatic and terrestrial environments, the tardigrade fossil record is exceedingly sparse. Molecular clocks estimate that tardigrades diverged from other panarthropod lineages before the Cambrian, but only two definitive crown-group representatives have been described to date, both from Cretaceous fossil deposits in North America. Here, we report a third fossil tardigrade from Miocene age Dominican amber. Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus gen. et sp. nov. is the first unambiguous fossil representative of the diverse superfamily Isohypsibioidea, as well as the first tardigrade fossil described from the Cenozoic. We propose that the patchy tardigrade fossil record can be explained by the preferential preservation of these microinvertebrates as amber inclusions, coupled with the scarcity of fossiliferous amber deposits before the Cretaceous.
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Are less detrimental parasites better integrated in an inquiline community? A test using red wood ant myrmecophiles
- Background: A host infected with multiple parasitic species provides a unique system to test evolutionary and ecological hypotheses. Different parasitic species associated with a single host are expected to occupy different niches. This niche specialization can evolve from intraguild competition among parasites. However, niche specialization can also be structured directly by the host when its defence strategy depends on the parasite’s potential impact. Then it can be expected that species with low or no tendency to prey on host brood will elicit less aggression than severe brood parasitic species and will be able to integrate better in the host system. We examined this hypothesis in a large community of symbionts associated with European red wood ants (Formica rufa group) by testing the association between 1) level of symbiont integration (i.e. presence in dense brood chambers vs. less populated chambers without brood) 2) level of ant aggression towards the symbiont 3) brood predation tendency of the symbiont. Results: Symbionts differed vastly in integration level and we demonstrated for the first time that relatively unspecialized ant symbionts or myrmecophiles occur preferentially in brood chambers. Based on their integration level, we categorize the tested myrmecophiles into three categories: 1) species attracted to the dense brood chambers 2) species rarely or never present in the brood chambers 3) species randomly distributed throughout the nest. The associates varied greatly in brood predation tendency and in aggression elicited. However, we did not find a correlation for the whole myrmecophile community between a) brood predation tendency and host’s aggression b) integration level and host’s aggression c) integration level and brood predation tendency. Conclusions: Our results indicate that red wood ants did not act more hostile towards species that have a high tendency to prey on brood compared to species that are less likely or do not prey on brood. We show that potentially harmful parasites can penetrate into the deepest parts of a social insect fortress. We discuss these seemingly paradoxical findings in relation to models on coevolution and evolutionary arms races and list factors which can make the presence of potentially harmful parasites within the brood chambers evolutionary stable.
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SeaDataCloud temperature and salinity data collections
- Two versions of temperature and salinity historical data collections for each European marginal sea (Arctic Sea, Baltic Sea, Black Sea, North Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, and Mediterranean Sea) have been published within the framework of SeaDataNet2 Project. They represent a snapshot of the SeaDataNet database content at two different times: V1.1 (Jan 2014, Simoncelli et al., 2014) and V2 (Mar 2015, Simoncelli et al., 2015 and 2016). A Quality Control Strategy (QCS) was developed in SeaDataNet2 and continuously refined in order to improve the quality of the data and create the best data products. The QCS iterative approach facilitates the upgrade of the data and it allows a versioning of data products. A newer version of temperature and salinity historical data collections has been released within SeaDataCloud Project in June 2018. The objective of this presentation is to briefly overview the existing SeaDataNet products and to present the first release of SeaDataCloud temperature and salinity historical data collections (SDC_DATA_TS_V1), spanning the time period 1900-2017, their characteristics in terms of space-time data distribution and their usability. A particular focus will be dedicated to the Mediterranean Sea collection. Temperature and Salinity data sets were analyzed at regional level to assess and report on their quality. A common basic QC analysis was performed using ODV software (5.0.0) and following common QC guidelines. Product Information Documents (PIDocs) contain all specifications about the general products’ characteristics (space-time coverage, resolution, format, usability) and quality (validation methodology and results). Fig. 1 shows an example in the Mediterranean Sea of data density map and time distribution histogram produced per each European basin. Fig. 2 is an example of the scatter diagrams produced per each region and contained in the PIDocs. Statistics about the SeaDataNet infrastructure population in terms of temperature and salinity data per sea basin show a progressive increase of available data. Data quality also improved thanks to the introduction of additional checks by regional experts, exploiting the complete metadata description. The statistics about the quality flags after the quality assessment presents very high percentages of good (QF=1) or probably good data (QF=2): ~99% for the Mediterranean Sea; 98- 99% for the Black Sea; ~99% Arctic Sea; ~99% Baltic Sea; 98-99% for the North Sea and 96(S)- 99% for the North Atlantic Ocean. In fact, the analysis could be performed by instrument type to verify the data set completeness and consistency, and per data originator to identify systematic data anomalies. The derived metadata statistics per sea basin allow monitoring the European data sharing landscape per sea basin and the advent of new sensors, which require particular efforts in data management and quality assessment. Conclusions and Developments All SeaDataCloud products are available as ODV collections through a web catalog (https:// www.seadatanet.org/Products) together with their associated Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and Product Information Document (PIDoc) containing the specifications about product’s generation, quality assessment and technical details to facilitate users’ uptake. The progressive automation of the QCS in the SeaDataCloud Virtual Research Environment will speed up the basic quality check process of the data and further improve the quality of the SeaDataNet infrastructure content and the derived products, which could be delivered with a regular time schedule.
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SeaDataCloud quality control of data collections
- During the SeaDataNet II (SDN) EU-project, the Quality Control Strategy (QCS) has been implemented and continuously reviewed aiming at improving the quality of the global dataset and creating the best products. This QCS has also been used for the first aggregated dataset provided in SeaDataCloud (SDC). New regional temperature and salinity data collections covering the time period 1900-2017 have been released within the SeaDataCloud (SDC) project in 2018. A general description of these datasets, their data quality assessment procedure and results are presented. The specific procedure implemented during SDN II allows assuring and certifying the best quality for the datasets (Fig. 1). After the data harvesting from the central CDI catalogue, QC has been performed at regional levels in a coordinated way, using the ODV software (5.0.0) as common and basic QC analysis tool. In SDC the additional checks have been performed per basin to consider the specific water masses characteristics, per instrument type to investigate data completeness and consistency, per data provider to better identify data anomalies. This QCS allowed to highlight doubtful data and to organize the data anomalies in lists that have been sent to each concerned data originator together with guidelines explaining the expected corrections. The National Oceanographic Data Centers (NODC) have been asked, on the base of those lists, to check and eventually correct the original data and resubmit them in the SDC dataflow. The iterative procedure has been designed to facilitate the update and improvement of SDC database content. A detailed description of each regional dataset (Fig. 2) is contained in a Product Information Document (PIDoc): the general products’ characteristics (space-time coverage, resolution, format), its quality (validation methodology results) together with experts’recommendations for its usability. ODV qualified dataset collections and PIDocs are available at https://www.seadatanet.org/Products. Within SeaDataCloud, the implementation of a cloud environment (Virtual research environment, VRE in Figure 3) aims to optimize and automate the QCS at the central level assuring a continuous monitoring of the database content and its quality. The VRE gives the possibility of generating database snapshots on a regular basis, it facilitates data products versioning and it allows to combine data with subsets from external sources. The VRE will offer to the users the opportunity to access SDC data and services in the cloud thus providing the possibility of generating their own temperature and salinity data products as well as products for other parameters.
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MSFD: an opportunity for harmonised data management
- MSFD: INSPIRE used as the reporting standard for metadata and data The Marine Strategic Framework Directive strives for Good Environmental Status of marine waters by 2020 and requires the Member States to report a wide array of criteria for eleven themes or descriptors. For Belgium, the criteria cover biodiversity, habitats, population health, eutrophication, seafloor morphology, hydrology, contaminants in the environment and in seafood, macrolitter and the introduction of energy (noise). It is the first time that the (meta)data has to be reported according to the INSPIRE requirements. For Belgium, MUMM (Management Unit of the Mathematical Model of the North Sea, OD Nature, RBINS), is coordinating the monitoring activities and collaborates with experts from different scientific institutes to prepare the second assessment of the status of the Belgian marine waters. The monitoring data is managed and disseminated to the EC and the public by the Belgian Marine Data Centre (BMDC). The primary data has been collected by monitoring activities or collated from other sources by several marine specialists. Harmonised monitoring reporting impossible without transversal approach The very diverse array of data types (in situ or track, polygon or gridded; many data themes), the INSPIRE requirements and the necessity to maximize the reuse of the collected data have led to the need of a streamlined data flow, that creates new and incorporates existing processes. BMDC’s Data and Inventory Tracking System (DITS) (Lagring et al., 2014) codebase was modified to allow the derivation of facets, that can be used to fulfill specific reporting needs and abstract away some of the functionality and metadata fields that are common to a specific reporting theme. Such facets are pluggable in the new website of BMDC. The MSFD facet allows the primary submission of data files and serves three purposes: providing an anchor for the data file(s) during the MSFD reporting by MUMM, providing an entry point for in-situ or track data to be ingested and data managed in the central oceanographic database (IDOD) of BMDC, and fulfilling the obligation Belgium has with regards to INSPIRE. The in-situ data falls within the INSPIRE theme ‘Oceanographic Geographical Features’, which makes use of the Observations and Measurements scheme to describe the data. In IDOD mappings are made with the NERC vocabularies, eg. P02 or P01, that describe the observedProperty in O&M. Surface-based data is represented as shapefiles in a GeoServer system; the shapefiles’ attributes are enriched in order to make the INSPIRE transformations as easy as possible. The metadata of a DITS dataset is exposed in ISO 19115:2003 through an API which allows the harvesting by systems like GeoNetwork and the propagation to the Belgian National Spatial Data Infrastructure. Specific data transformations have been written to extract data into the INSPIRE- compliant GML format according to the recommendations by the INSPIRE maintenance and implementation group (MIG) and the TG DATA of MSFD; the transformed data is hosted at the Belgian National Geographic Institute.
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EMODnet Data Ingestion: ‘Wake up your data’
- The ‘EMODnet Ingestion and safe-keeping of marine data’ project, started mid-2016, seeks to identify and reach out to organisations from research, public, and private sectors who are holding marine datasets and who are not yet connected and contributing to the existing marine data management infrastructures which are driving EMODnet. Those potential data providers should be motivated and supported to release their datasets for safekeeping and subsequent freely distribution and publication through EMODnet. The EMODnet Data Ingestion portal facilitates submission of their sleeping marine datasets for further processing, Open Data publishing and contributing to applications for society. The activities are undertaken by a large European network that is geographically anchored in the countries bordering all European marine basins, and covers all EMODnet data themes. The EMODnet Data Ingestion members are national and regional marine and oceanographic data repositories and data management experts. The coordinators of the EMODnet thematic portals are also part of this new initiative. Moreover the data centres work together on pan-European and international scales in organisations such as IODE, ICES, EuroGeoSurveys, EuroGOOS, and IHO, and for pan-European marine data management infrastructures such as SeaDataCloud, EurOBIS and EGDI. The latter are feeding into several EMODnet thematic portals. The emphasis of activities in the first year has been put towards developing the EMODnet Data Ingestion portal and its services for ingesting and publishing data sets, developing the pathways for processing and elaborating of data submissions, laying a basis for promotion and marketing activities, and making an initial inventory of potential data sources and their providers. The EMODnet Data Ingestion portal been launched early February 2017. It encourages data providers to share marine data, gives marine data management guidance information, and provides a range of services such as: ■ submission service for easy ingestion of marine data packages ■ view submissions service to oversee submitted data sets ‘as is’ ■ data wanted service to post requests for specific data types Submission forms with data packages are assigned to qualified data centres depending on the country of the data provider and the type of EMODnet theme. This group includes not only the EMODnet Ingestion consortium but also the groups of data centres who are involved in each of the EMODnet Thematic portals. A distinction is made between 2 phases in the life cycle of a data submission: ■ Phase I: from submission to publishing of the submitted datasets package ‘as is’ ■ Phase II: further elaboration of the data sets and integration (of subsets) in national, European and EMODnet thematic portals. This split allows to publish already in an early stage the original data package with high quality metadata. For operational oceanography a close cooperation takes place with EMODnet Physics. This aims at identifying and arranging inclusion of additional stations for Near Real Time (NRT) data exchange. The Data Ingestion portal explains how the NRT exchange is organised with EuroGOOS – Copernicus and guidance how to connect in practice. Furthermore a Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) pilot is set-up for Real Time data exchange. A client service to locate stations and to retrieve data streams in a time series viewer is hosted at the EMODnet Physics portal and ‘advertised’ at the EMODnet Data Ingestion portal. Promotion and outreach activities are equally important as technical developments. In the first year it has focused on establishing cooperation and synergy within the EMODnet community. A portfolio of promotional items has been developed, such as leaflets, posters, presentations, stickers, and a wonderful animation. These are part of the promotion and marketing strategy that was designed to reach out to potential data providers. In the second year this plan has been put into motion on full scale for a wider outreach and marketing to potential data providers in government, science and industry. This has so far resulted in many submissions and also in development of special use cases, such as for monitoring data from offshore renewable energy projects or minting DOIs for research data to support data citing for data submitters.
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From SeaDataNet to SeaDataCloud: historical data collections and new data products
- Temperature and Salinity historical data collections covering the time period 1900-2013/2014 were created for each European marginal sea (Arctic Sea, Baltic Sea, Black Sea, North Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, and Mediterranean Sea) within the framework of SeaDataNet2 Project and they are available as ODV collections through a web catalog (https://www.seadatanet.org/Products/Aggregated-datasets). Two versions have been published and they represent a snapshot of the SeaDataNet database content at two different times: V1.1 (January 2014) and V2 (March 2015). A Quality Control Strategy (QCS) was developped and continuously refined in order to improve the quality of the database content and create the best data products. The QCS consists of four main phases: 1) data harvesting from the data infrastructure; 2) file and parameter aggregation; 3) secondary quality check analysis; 4)correction of data anomalies. The approach is iterative to facilitate the upgrade of the database content and it allows a versioning of data products. Regional temperature and salinity monthly climatologies have been produced from V1.1 historical data collections and they are also available (https://www.seadatanet.org/Products/Climatologies). Within the new SeaDataCloud Project the release of updated historical data collections and new climatologies is planned. SeaDataCloud novelties are the introduction of decadal climatologies at various resolutions, the development of climatologies for the Global Ocean and a task dedicated to new data products, like Mixed Layer Depth climatologies, Ocean Heat Content estimates, coastal climatologies from HF radar data. All SeaDataCloud products are available through a dedicated web catalogue together with their relative Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and Product Information Document (PIDoc) containing all specifications about product’s generation, quality assessment and technical details to facilitate users’ uptake. The presentation will briefly overview the existing SeaDataNet products and introduce the SeaDataCloud products’ plan, but the main focus will be on the first release (February 2018) of SeaDataCloud Temperature and Salinity historical data collections, spanning the time period 1900-2017, their characteristics in terms of space-time data distribution and their usability.
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Online catalogue of Species in Belgium - 1st RBINS roundtable discussion
- Report of RBINS round table meeting held on 30/01/2018 Belgian Species List (BSL) – Website SPECIES.BE Belgian Bioarchaeological Inventory (BBI) – SPECIES.BE/archeo Participants: Wouter Dekoninck (OD Taxo & Phylogeny), Marc Peeters (OD Nature – BIOPOLS), Wim Van Neer (OD Earth and History of Life) For OD Nature – BEDIC: Marianne Schlesser, Yvan Stojanov, Francis Strobbe, Thomas Vandenberghe. The report contains a summary of discussions + a priority list on possible actions for BSL project.
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Improving 3D photogrammetry models through spectral imaging: Tooth enamel as a case study
- Reflective or translucent materials are a challenge to digitize in 3D. Results are better with a matt coating although objects from museum collections are often too fragile or too valuable to be treated in this way. It is therefore essential that alternative solutions are found. This study analyzed spectral photogrammetry as a possible solution. Spectral photogrammetry is an emerging technique which uses images at different wavelengths to create 3D models. Tooth enamel is a challenging material to digitize. Six sets of teeth were photographed at different wavelengths. The results showed that the quality of the models enamels parts improved when taken with ultraviolet wavelengths whilst models were less accurate when photogrammetry was performed with the red and infrared spectrum. This can be explained by the optical properties of enamel. This study demonstrates that knowing the optical properties of a material beforehand could help future photogrammetric digitization of challenging materials.
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NICHE PARTITIONING OF THE EUROPEAN CARNIVOROUS MAMMALS DURING THE PALEOGENE
- We here describe the first partial cranium of Hyaenodon leptorhynchus, the type species of the taxonomically diverse and widely distributed hypercarnivorous genus Hyaenodon (Hyaenodonta). The cranium is from the S´eon Saint-Andr´e deposits (Marseille, France; Chattian, MP26). It is preserved in a dense red marl matrix that obscures key morphological features. CT-scans were used to reconstruct the specimen. The morphology of the cranium reinforces the homogeneity previously observed in Hyaenodon despite its specific diversity. The fossil represents a juvenile: it preserves its deciduous canines and the P3 is almost fully erupted. This pattern of delayed canine eruption is a trait shared among North American and European Hyaenodon. This discovery is the third occurrence of this species in the early Chattian: indeed, over a period of 5 My (from MP24 to MP27), only two occurrences (Rigal-Jouet and Saint-Martin de Casselvi, MP25) have been reported. Based on body mass and the general Hyaenodon body plan, we confidently identify H. leptorhynchus as a cursorial hypercarnivorous predator, hunting prey such as small artiodactyls. In order to understand the evolution of the European carnivorous faunas, we compared taxonomic diversity and the evolution of body mass in Hyaenodon and amphicyonids: this reveals stasis in Hyaenodon through the late Eocene and Oligocene, while amphicyonids show an extensive ecological diversification, especially during the Chattian.
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Les Ostracodes des schistes à aspect "Matagne" de la partie supérieure du Frasnien de l'affleurement protégé de Boussu-en-Fagne.
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La Zone à Svantovites lethiersi n. sp., zone nouvelle d'Ostracodes de la fin du Frasnien et du début du Famennien
