Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Flore du Gabon, a final push, Phase 2" "Marc[us] Simon Maria Sosef" "Meise Botanic Garden, Meise Botanic Garden" "Finalizing the Flore du Gabon series" "Diversity and evolution of Laboulbeniomycetes" "André De Kesel" "Meise Botanic Garden" "A project about Laboulbeniales (general) with emphasis on resolving the phylogeny of the genus Laboulbenia and description of new taxa (Belgium & abroad)." "DiSSCo Flanders: Towards a collection management infrastructure for Flanders" "Steven Dessein, Maarten Trekels, Patricia Mergen" "Universiteit Antwerpen, KU Leuven, VUB, KMDA, Université Libre de Bruxelles, University of Namur, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences, University of Antwerp, Flanders Marine Institute, Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), Meise Botanic Garden, Meise Botanic Garden" "DiSSCo is a world-class Research Infrastructure for the physical and digital curation of European natural science collections under common management and access policies. To make the collections more visible and used, their associated data and media should become more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). Representing the largest ever formal agreement between natural history museums, botanical gardens, zoos, universities and other collection-holding institutions, DiSSCo enables the transformation of a fragmented landscape into an integrated knowledge base. DiSSCo Flanders will address biological, anthropological and geological collections, comprising preserved, living, tissue and molecular collections. Smaller lab and orphan collections are fully part of this proposal to guarantee their proper conservation and re-usability. The whole workflow from specimen sampling in the field to their digitization and online publication enabling re-use of the data and media will be addressed in terms of proper collection management." "Increasing Marine Taxonomic Knowledge in Mozambique: the Case of Two Neglected Taxa, part Two" "Yves Samyn" "Meise Botanic Garden" "Mozambique has the third largest coastline in mainland East Africa. This coastline is – Somalia excluded – taxonomically the least explored in Eastern Africa. This is regretful given that studies show that this is an extremely productive area due to difficult to characterize upwelling and eddy systems, making it one of the highest biodiverse regions in the Indian Ocean. The three recognised marine bioregions (basically the South, the centre and the North of the country) deserve detailed taxonomic study. The South of Mozambique received focused taxonomic study for macroalgae and echinoderms in 2018 thanks to support of the Belgian GTI, the King Leopold III Fund for Nature Exploration and Conservation, Research Foundation - Flanders, the Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences and the Royal Museum for Central Africa. This project is the logical follow-up of the successful 2018 leg. It will again focus on the taxonomic characterisation of echinoderms and macroalgae, this time in the North of Mozambique (Pemba), which is thought to have closer affinities with the tropical Western Indian Ocean marine fauna and flora, in contrast to southern Mozambique where affinities with the Agulhas marine province prevail. This project will, as its 2018 antecedent, be instrumental in alleviating poverty in a country that is undergoing rapid demographic changes that put high pressure on its environment. In order to ensure capacity building and durability and return on investment of engaged resources, dedicated hands-on training will be foreseen for selected Mozambican partners, in caso formerly selected participants to the past MaTaMo1 expedition. Also, in order to have maximum outreach and leverage towards modern standards in taxonomy of this capacity building project, an invertebrate (incl. echinoderms) expert of the Florida Museum of Natural History (Prof. Dr. G. Paulay) is willing to deliver additional capacity building support (through auto-funding). Hands-on training will again be foreseen and resulting collections will again be fairly split upon participating institutions, ensuring durability in capacity building. Project results will be, as previously and as appropriately, be jointly presented at international conferences and published in international journals." "Flore du Gabon, a final push, Phase 1" "Marc[us] Simon Maria Sosef" "Meise Botanic Garden, Meise Botanic Garden" "DiSSCo : Scientific Collections unlocked !" "Kristine Vander Mijnsbrugge, Steven Dessein, Patricia Mergen" "KMDA, University of Namur, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences, Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO), Flanders Marine Institute, Meise Botanic Garden, Meise Botanic Garden" "The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) is a pan-European Research Infrastructure of 21 countries. It positions natural science collections at the centre of scientific excellence and innovation in research on the environment, biodiversity, climate change, food security, health and bioeconomy. DiSSCo’s mission is to mobilise, unify and deliver bio- and geodiversity information at a scale, format, and precision required by scientific communities, transforming the fragmented landscape into a coherent research infrastructure. If funded DiSSCo will intensify the collaboration and exchange of expertise between Belgian collections by integrating and upgrading their distributed infrastructure and collections. The scope covers collections in botany, zoology and geology, including molecular collections. By optimising the physical and digital management of these collections we will enable innovative science. Also, by improving access to them we will increase the visibility and usage of our collections regionally, nationally, and internationally." "NaturalHeritage.be: Modular interoperable database system and Portal for Belgian Natural History Collections" "Ana Casino, Didier Vanden Spiegel, Patrick Semal, Larissa Smirnova, Henry Engledow" "Royal Museum of Central Africa, CONSORTIUM OF EUROPEAN TAXONOMIC FACILITIES, Botanic Garden Meise, Royal Museum for Central Africa, Meise Botanic Garden, Meise Botanic Garden" "European natural science collections contain the largest and most significant part of the world's scientific knowledge of the earth’s structure, environment and biosphere. They constitute a key international research infrastructure for tackling major socio-economic and scientific challenges. The Belgian collections cover all the fields of Natural History including Zoology, Botany, Geology, Palaeontology and Anthropology. Belgian scientific institutions house some 55 million specimens and is one of the most important collections relating to Natural Sciences worldwide. The 3 collection partners of this project are members of CETAF, the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities, which contributes to Europe's knowledge-base by enhancing synergy between the collections and research capabilities of its members. CETAF facilitates the normalization of data and metadata in Natural Sciences databases as well as the implementation of unique identifiers for collection specimens, which is essential data aggregation. Several European Natural History Institutions are presently working on a proposal for the coming ESFRI Roadmap 2018. This initiative, called DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections), is a long-term project aiming to ensure open access to European natural history collections thereby broadening the user community and finding innovative solutions through the use of natural science related data. As partner of NaturalHeritage CETAF will be the interface between the project and the other European institutions active in the domain. The three Belgian institutions RBINS, RMCA and APM have a long history of collaboration and have for the past 15 years formed the informal yet solid Be-TAF consortium. The directors and middle management of the 3 institutions take strategic decisions for joint activities as well as defining Belgium’s position in the national and international arena. They also form the National Task Force (NTF) for the Belgian participation in DiSSCo, write proposals together and represent each other at key meetings where relevant. The three institutions have appointed staff members to play the role of facilitators and following up the Be-TAF joint activities, namely Patricia Mergen for RMCA and APM, and Carole Paleco for RBINS. Despite Be-TAF not being a legal entity, the 3 partners regularly sign more formal Memoranda of Understanding or Collaboration Agreements where objectives are clearly stated and the roles of each partners defined. The intention to sign a 5 year MoU for a joint digital collection management agreement including this Natural Heritage.be activity, if it is funded. More than a decade ago, RBINS decided to develop an “in-house” solution, called DaRWIN. The current version, still used by RBINS and more recently also by RMCA, is an Open Source system. However, it was built as a system predominantly taxonomically based to accommodate information for RBINS Natural History collections. The recent ratification of the Nagoya Protocol by the EU members and its implementation, as well as the impact of other European protocols related to access to public data (INSPIRE, Open Data, Open Science) define also a new framework of collaboration where interoperability between different data sources are crucial. The fast evolution in programming and data exchange together with the exponential development of web- and cloud- based applications can provide distributed access to a wide variety of geo-coded or geo-referenced natural sciences information. This imposes now the use of a totally new architecture, with the interconnection of separate modules covering the different disciplines in the Natural Sciences at its core. This interoperability both within the NaturalHeritage.be portal, as well as outside with other sources of references and/or with other similar on-line collection systems will help scientists and decision makers to address Belgian Natural History Collections using cross-linked and big-data approaches. The project will research and evaluate how a modular architecture can address these new requirements. This architecture will be based on two levels of interoperability between small modules and with international authority files. Based on this research, the project will develop a new database system and search portal so that there is an interoperation between all the Belgian natural history collections. The consortium will valorise the long term existing in-house expertise in Open Source systems in the three collection-based institutions in order to reach the expected goals, respecting the workflow in each institution. Open source technologies allow resource sharing for development and maintenance, thus ensuring sustainability. Proven functionality in the existing version of DaRWIN will be transferred to the new system with enhancements. New modules will be developed for geological, botanical and living collections. The rendering of embedded multimedia files hosted by external specialized platforms will be added. A common search portal overlaying the local query interfaces with interoperable databases that use compatible technologies will reinforce synergy between partners by establishing links between data which are unconnected at present (e.g. relationship between soil/substrate, vegetation and associated fauna). This approach will also improve cross-validation of data and avoid multiple encoding, which is time-consuming and a source of error. To achieve modularity of NaturalHeritage.be and to insure independence of each module, we will implement all of them by extending the principle of dependency injection based on a service container (or dependency injection container). Each module will therefore be a service provided by the application, which can stand alone or in combination with others as required. The dependency between modules is therefore dynamically constructed and unique to each installation or to each “orientation” in the application (Zoology, Botany, Geology and Palaeontology)." "XI EDF Project in Yangambi" "Francesca Lanata, Steven Dessein" "Meise Botanic Garden, Meise Botanic Garden" "This project aims to study ecosystem services of selected plant, algal and fungal groups in the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve. The focus will be on Robusta coffee, assessment of water quality through diatom monitoring, and edible fungi." "Environnemental education program in Virunga National park" "Francesca Lanata" "Meise Botanic Garden, Meise Botanic Garden" "The objective of the program is to use the garden of Matebe hydroelectrical plant to promote environmental education in schools, civil society and the media in North Kivu. The activities will underline the Virunga National Park’s role in preserving this unique hotspot of Africa’s biodiversity through: (1) reinforcing the linkage between natural resources and development in a ""modern botanical garden"" around a ""sustainable energy resource”; (2) rising awareness and sensitivity about plants and ecosystems (showing different plants from other regions of DRC); (3) Launching guide training program; (4) Organising school visits." "Re-investigation and lectotypification of O. Müller’s diatoms from East Africa: taxa from the genera Rhopalodia, Nitzschia, Sellaphora, Placoneis" "SYNTHESYS, Meise Botanic Garden" "Müller (1903, 1904, 1910) described many new diatom taxa from East Africa based on material collected at the beginning of the 20th century. Original slides were lost during World War II but historic material was rediscovered at the Botanic Garden of Berlin, Dahlem. This makes it possible to designate lectotypes. During a previous SYNTHESYS project (2005) the investigation including lectotypification was undertaken for 32 taxa belonging to the genera Surirella and Cymatopleura, resulting in 7 publications. The study of Rhopalodia was started but not finished. The present project aims to continue this study of the types of East African diatoms. We will focus on the continuation of Rhopalodia taxa and start with taxa belonging to the genera Nitzschia, Sellaphora and Placoneis, the last two were treated by Müller as Navicula s.l. Considering the renewed interest in diatoms from East and Central Africa as well as water quality studies based on diatoms, it is important to understand and typify the diatoms described from this region, and to make them accessible to the scientific community. The present proposal concerns 42 taxa, distributed over the four mentioned genera (Rhopalodia: 17; Nitzschia: 13; Sellaphora + Placoneis: 12). Investigation will be done on newly made light microscopic slides in order to designate a lectotype for each studied taxon. The study will focus on species variability and a large part of our time will go into the investigations of the morphological ultrastructure of the diatom valves using scanning electron microscopy. As done for Surirella and Cymatopleura, the results will be discussed in several papers and send for publication in peer-reviewed international journals."