Search publications of the members of the Royal Belgian institute of natural Sciences
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Ant assemblage structure on cocoa trees in smallholder farms in the Centre Region of Cameroon
- We investigated the ant community structure in cocoa farms in the Centre Region of Cameroon. Ants were collected on the cocoa trees during the years 2006 and 2007 using chemical knock‐down. We tested the hypothesis of the existence of deterministic factor in the structuration of ant mosaic using C‐Score; we assessed the relationship between the numerical dominant and subdominant ant species using Spearman correlation test and discussed on the influence of vegetation structure and farm management on the ant community structure. A total of 53 ant species belonging to 20 genera and five subfamilies were identified from a set of 51,525 workers collected. C‐score analysis supported the hypothesis that ant community were structured by competition. Negative relationships were found between dominant ant species. Farming practices which were mainly pruning, chemical treatment and habitat structure appeared to influence the ecological status and distribution of dominant ant species.
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Diversity of Ants and Termites of the Botanical Garden of the University of Lomé, Togo
- Ants and termites are used as bioindicators in many ecosystems. Little knowledge is available about them in Togo, especially ants. This study aimed to find out how ants and termites could be used to assess the restoration of former agricultural land. These insect groups were sampled within six transects of 50 × 2 m2 (using pitfall traps, monoliths, baits for ants and hand sampling for termites) in two consecutive habitats: open area (grassland) and covered area (an artificial forest). Seventeen termite species and 43 ant species were collected. Seven ant species were specific to the covered area against four for the open area, while four unshared species of termite were found in the open area against three in the covered area. The presence of unshared species was linked to vegetation, as Trinervitermes (Holmgren, 1912), a grass feeding termite, was solely found in open area. Also, for some ant species like Cataulacus traegaordhi (Santschi, 1914), Crematogaster (Lund, 1831) species, Oecophylla longinoda (Latreille, 1802) and Tetraponera mocquerysi (Brown, 1960), all arboreal species, vegetation was a determining factor for their presence. The occurrence of these species together with Basidentitermes mactus (Sjöstedt, 1911), Strumigenys bernardi (Brown, 1960) and S. sistrura (Bolton, 1983), suggest a more advanced level of restoration of the covered area.
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A database of threat statuses and life-history traits of Red List species in Flanders (northern Belgium)
- Red Lists estimate the extinction risk of species at global or regional levels and are important instruments in conservation policies. Global Red List assessments are readily available via the IUCN website (https://www.iucnredlist.org) and are regularly updated by (taxonomic) experts. Regional Red Lists, however, are not always easy to find and often use local criteria to assess the local extinction risk of species.
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First Record of the Holarctic and Northern Oriental Genus Gymnopternus Loew (Diptera: Dolichopodidae, Dolichopodinae) near the Equator: Description of a New Species from a Swamp Forest in Singapore
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Hemiptera: Fulgoridae, Lanternflies, Sakondry
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New contribution to the study of genus Aegosoma Audinet-Serville, 1832 in Vietnam with description of a new species from the central part (Coleoptera, Cerambycidae, Prioninae)
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Geophilus easoni Arthur et al., new to Belgium (Myriapoda: Chilopoda: Geophilidae)
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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.
