Publications

The freshwater snail Bulinus truncatus is an important intermediate host for trematode parasites causing urogenital schistosomiasis, a tropical disease affecting over 150 million people. Despite its medical importance, uncertainty remains about its global distribution and the potential impacts of climate change on its future spread. Here, we investigate the distribution of B. truncatus, combining the outputs of correlative and mechanistic ...

In Flanders, beavers have reappeared since 2000 and their numbers have expanded rapidly over the last decade, challenging impact management. To help identify areas with increased vulnerability to beaver damage we developed a species distribution model (SDM). In this model, we combined a MaxEnt-based approach to estimate habitat suitability and potential future spread with simulated dispersal using the SiMRiv R-package. We constructed our model ...

To reach the renewable energy targets set by the European Commission, a tenfold expansion of the installed offshore wind farms is needed. Since the construction of offshore wind farms may affect local soft-sediment fauna, an efficient monitoring technique is needed to monitor the potential effects on the marine ecosystem. Here, we assess whether eDNA metabarcoding is a suitable alternative to monitor fish and epibenthos biodiversity in these ...

Plant pathogens, weeds, and insect pests pose significant threats to plants important for agriculture. Currently, approximately 10,000 herbivorous insects have been identified to be insect pests, which collectively cause an estimated 15.6% loss in crop yield across multiple crop species. Historically, insect pests have been controlled through the use of synthetic pesticides. However, the extensive use of such insecticidal compounds has led to ...

Several species of Agave have been recorded as becoming naturalized—even invasive—in, especially, mild-climate parts of the world. Most of these species use multiple reproductive strategies, in particular the production of vast numbers of bulbils on the peduncle and side branches of spent inflorescences. One such species, A. fourcroydes, in the vernacular known as henequen, is widely cultivated, especially for the extraction of fibers, also ...

Habitat degradation and climate change are globally acting as pivotal drivers of wildlife collapse, with mounting evidence that this erosion of biodiversity will accelerate in the following decades1-3. Here, we quantify the past, present and future ecological suitability of Europe for bumblebees, a threatened group of pollinators ranked among the highest contributors to crop production value in the northern hemisphere4-8. We demonstrate coherent ...

Habitat management is necessary for the conservation of threatened species, yet best practices in fragmented human-dominated landscapes have remained difficult to generalise. We show that multi-scale vegetation management decisions in heathlands can be supported by integrating opportunistic citizen science data and multispectral satellite data. Opportunistic observations were gathered from ten typical, mostly threatened animal species of dry ...

Translocation of rare plant species to their original habitat is an increasingly used conservation approach around the world. However, we lack information on the factors affecting translocation outcomes. Research on the influence of seed provenance on plant fitness is limited in the context of translocations using plug plants. This study aims at exploring the effect of seed origin on vegetative and floral performances of three species (Arnica ...

Genetic monitoring of populations currently attracts interest in the context of the Convention on Biological Diversity but needs long-term planning and investments. However, genetic diversity has been largely neglected in biodiversity monitoring, and when addressed, it is treated separately, detached from other conservation issues, such as habitat alteration due to climate change. We report an accounting of efforts to monitor population genetic ...