Projects

The poor state of the data-deficient European seabass in the southern North Sea calls for an informed fisheries management to protect the intertwined socio-economic and ecological stakes at risk. The highly mobile Dicentrarchus labrax is known to move from shallow, inshore feeding grounds in summer to deeper waters offshore in search of warmer temperatures in winter for spawning. Knowledge on these spatiotemporal changes in movement behaviour ...

Aquaculture of the native European oyster in the Belgian North Sea, will not only support a new economic activity but will also help planned restoration efforts through systematical provision of the restoration zones with oyster seed. The European oyster is almost extinct and for these restoration efforts to be successful, recruitment should be safeguarded year after year. This can be achieved through aquaculture practices. On the long run, ...

The major aim of this research project is to disentangle the absolute and relative contribution of specific adaptations to distinct habitats and mycorrhizal divergence to reproductive isolation in closely related Epipactis species. Adaptive divergence due to habitat differences is thought to play a major role in formation of new species. However the extent to which individual reproductive isolating barriers related to habitat differentiation ...

To understand how species respond to global warming we need to know how their trait values evolved along two geographic axes: latitudinal gradients and poleward range expansion fronts. This asks for an integrated multi-trait approach. Therefore, we will follow as framework the pace-of-life syndrome (POLS) which states that individuals/populations align along a fast-slow continuum with animals with a fast type showing a fast life history ...

Tropical rainforests cover only 7% of the earth’s surface, but they are by far the richest biomes in terms of vascular plant diversity. To ensure the resilience and long-term stability of tropical rainforests, fostering the regeneration of the occurring woody plant species is critical. Yet, crucial aspects of gene flow, including pollination and seed dispersal, have become strongly jeopardized through ongoing large-scale anthropogenic ...

Global warming is occurring to a rate that exceeds the potential of most species to evolve phenotypes adapted to warmer climates. Assisted migration, or the deliberate northward translocation of individuals, is a widely discussed conservation strategy aiming to introduce phenotypes pre-adapted to projected climate change. However, there is a critical lack of assisted migration studies integrating the effects of habitat fragmentation, another ...

The evolution of sociality in insects is an example of a so-called “major transition in evolution”, whereby previously solitary breeding insects went on to live in social groups. The question of what ancestral reproductive ground plans (RGPs) from solitary breeding insects have been co-opted in the evolution of their social behaviour is a topic of active study. Earlier, we have shown that conserved queen signals help to regulate the ...

Investigating one trait at a time is insufficient to understand the responses of organisms towards changing environments. This is because life history, behavioural and physiological traits integrate and align along a fast-slow axis, called the pace-of-life syndrome. For example, bold individuals with a fast metabolic rate live fast and die young, whereas shy individuals with a slow metabolism live slow and die old. We don’t know (i) which ...

Animal communication signals typically evolve because of a shared interest between the signaling and receiver individuals. In the present project, I will make the first systematic empirical and theoretical study of another class of signals, where the receiver instead is partly manipulated or “deceived”. To do so, I will use insect societies as my key model system, and study how four classes of manipulative signals that have been previously ...

Aquatic foodwebs can be fueled by photosynthetically produced organic matter (terrestrial or

aquatic), or by chemo-autotrophic or methane (CH4)-based metabolic pathways. While CH4

production is generally much lower in estuarine and coastal systems than in freshwater sediments,

the opposite holds for chemo-autotrophic pathways. While both the production and consumption

of methane are known to be important to consumers ...