Publications
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Plant resting site preferences and parity rates among the vectors of Rift Valley Fever in northeastern Kenya KU Leuven
BACKGROUND: Mosquito lifespan can influence the circulation of disease causing pathogens because it affects the time available for infection and transmission. The life-cycle of mosquitoes is determined by intrinsic and environmental factors, which can include the availability of hosts and suitable resting environments that shelter mosquitoes from extreme temperature and desiccating conditions. This study determined the parity rates (an indirect ...
Evolutionary Dynamics of Human Rotaviruses: Balancing Reassortment with Preferred Genome Constellations KU Leuven
Group A human rotaviruses (RVs) are a major cause of severe gastroenteritis in infants and young children. Yet, aside from the genes encoding serotype antigens (VP7; G-type and VP4; P-type), little is known about the genetic make-up of emerging and endemic human RV strains. To gain insight into the diversity and evolution of RVs circulating at a single location over a period of time, we sequenced the eleven-segmented, double-stranded RNA genomes ...
Livestock depredation by wild carnivores in the highlands of Wolaita zone, southern Ethiopia University of Antwerp
Context: Livestock depredation is a major medium- and large-carnivore conservation challenge around the globe, causing a substantial economic loss to small-scale agricultural communities in the Wolaita Highlands, southern Ethiopia, and often leading to retaliatory killing. In the Wolaita Highlands, southern Ethiopia, livestock depredation rates are increasing because of conversion of wild habitats into grazing lands. Various studies have ...
The distribution of plant consumption traits across habitat types and the patterns of fruit availability suggest a mechanism of coexistence of two sympatric frugivorous mammals Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp
Understanding the mechanisms governing the coexistence of organisms is an important question in ecology, and providing potential solutions contributes to conservation science. In this study, we evaluated the contribution of several mechanisms to the coexistence of two sympatric frugivores, using western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) in a tropical rainforest of southeast Cameroon ...
Crustacean parasites in the Belgian part of the North Sea: Sacculina carcini on Liocarcinus holsatus and Peltogaster paguri on Pagurus bernhardus Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
Sacculina carcini and Peltogaster paguri are rhizocephalan parasites on common swimming crab Liocarcinus holsatus and common hermit crab Pagurus bernhardus, respectively. The order Rhizocephala consists of parasitic barnacles with an extremely reduced morphology. Hosts are attacked by female cyprid larvae, which form an internal root-system (the interna), that eventually can evaginate an external reproductive body (the externa) on which ...
Cost-effectiveness of monoclonal antibody and maternal immunization against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants University of Antwerp
Background: Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) imposes a substantial burden on pediatric hospital capacity in Europe. Promising prophylactic interventions against RSV including monoclonal antibodies (mAb) and maternal immunizations (MI) are close to licensure. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of potential mAb and MI interventions against RSV in infants, for six European countries. Methods: We used a static cohort model to ...
Operational identification of preferred and fallback fruit species of a western lowland gorilla population in southeast Cameroon Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp
Within the dietary repertoire of any animal species, some resources are crucially important for species fitness, influencing the socio-ecology, geographic range and population density. Namely, preferred and fallback resources are hypothesized to exert evolutionary and ecological pressures in a way that other resources do not. Fallback foods are those whose consumption increases significantly inversely to the availability of preferred food. They ...
First results of a study of the feeding habits of Synodontis comoensis (Siluriformes : Mochokidae) in a West African river (Comoe River, Comoe National Park, Cote d'Ivoire) KU Leuven
The feeding habits of Synodontis comoensis (Siluriformes, Mochokidae) have been studied for the first time. Specimens caught in the Comoe River (Comoe National Park, Cote d'Ivoire) had fed on different types of food including insects (Diptera, Ephemeroptera, Hymenoptera, and Isoptera), molluscs (gastropods and bivalves), oligochaetes, and macrophytes. The food items most frequently found in the stomach contents were chironomid larvae, ...
Seagrass macrophytodetritus : a copepod hub: species diversity, dynamics and trophic ecology of the meiofauna community in Posidonia oceanica leaf litter accumulations Ghent University
Macrophytodetritus is a heterogeneous mixture of detrital material that accumulates on submerged unvegetated sand patches amid vast Mediterranean Posidonia oceanica seagrass meadows. Several vagile invertebrates are present in substantial biomass and biodiversity. Among these invertebrates, meiofauna (fauna between 38µm and 1mm) is ubiquitous and seems to play a key-feature in this dynamic and patchy system. Coastal ecosystems are under the ...