Projects
HELICITY: Evolution of correlated traits in response to city life: helicid snails as windows on the consequences of urban history Ghent University
Urbanization is one of the most dramatic land-use changes caused by humans, combining habitat fragmentation and loss, pollutions and increased temperature. While it causes numerous population declines in many species, others persist or even thrive in cities, possibly through evolutionary changes. In this project, I will study how urbanization shapes multivariate phenotypic evolution in such an organism, including not only life-history ...
A Statistical Framework for the Analysis of Ecological Data Collected via Citizen Science KU Leuven
Recent global biodiversity declines have prompted increased investments in research towards the understanding of ecosystem dynamics and spatio-temporal trends in species distributions. These complex natural phenomena necessitate the long-term assessment of geographically expansive regions, for which citizen science is considered to be a cost-effective data collection approach. However, study protocols are often absent in citizen science, or ...
A Statistical Framework for the Analysis of Ecological Data Collected via Citizen Science KU Leuven
Recent global biodiversity declines have prompted increased investments in research towards the understanding of ecosystem dynamics and spatio-temporal trends in species distributions. These complex natural phenomena necessitate the long-term assessment of geographically expansive regions, for which citizen science is considered to be a cost-effective data collection approach. However, study protocols are often absent in citizen science, or ...
Spatio-temporal deep learning workflows for transforming remote sensing data into geo-indicators for environmental policy support KU Leuven
Data-driven environmental indicators are necessary to tackle the challenges of the climate and biodiversity crises and to measure progress towards global targets such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At present, governmental agencies mainly invest in ground-based networks to monitor the status of our ecosystems and the environmental pressures they face. In Flanders, ground-based monitoring networks have been designed recently ...
The impact of partner diversity and mate availability on plant-pollinator network structure and plant fitness KU Leuven
Population genetics of western edge populations of the Moor frog Research Institute for Nature and Forest
Sabbatical Bonte Dries Ghent University
My scientific research aims to develop an integrated, individual-based spatial ecology that should generate a breakthrough in understanding large-scale (so-called macro-ecological) effects of global environmental changes. Central to my research is the integration of individual cariation and evolution with the aim of drawing up prediction models that allow us to (1) define general basic principles and (2) based on the above, the effects ...
Combined effects of drought stress and inbreeding on epigenetic inheritance and adaptive potential KU Leuven
Ongoing climate change and habitat fragmentation are among the most important threats to species and community persistence. The adaptive potential of species, and therefore their ability to cope with global environmental threats, is assumed to mainly depend on genetic variation underlying quantitative trait variation. However, recent advances in molecular ecology suggest an important role for epigenetic inheritance in adaptive ecological ...