Publicaties
A call for standardised snail ecological studies to support schistosomiasis risk assessment and snail control efforts KU Leuven
Freshwater snails act as intermediate hosts (IH) for schistosomiasis, a tropical disease affecting over 200 million people worldwide. Despite their medical importance, an extensive understanding of IH snail ecology remains absent. Especially data on the tolerance limits to different abiotic factors are fragmented and incomplete. Consequently, the construction of accurate species distribution models to identify snail habitats and guide targeted ...
Reconciling seascape genetics and fisheries science in three codistributed flatfishes KU Leuven
Uncertainty hampers innovative mixed-fisheries management by the scales at which connectivity dynamics are relevant to management objectives. The spatial scale of sustainable stock management is species-specific and depends on ecology, life history and population connectivity. One valuable approach to understand these spatial scales is to determine to what extent population genetic structure correlates with the oceanographic environment. Here, ...
The high diversity of Southern Ocean sea stars (Asteroidea) reveals original evolutionary pathways KU Leuven
Post-glacial establishment of locally adapted fish populations over a steep salinity gradient KU Leuven
Studies of colonization of new habitats that appear from rapidly changing environments are interesting and highly relevant to our understanding of divergence and speciation. Here, we analyse phenotypic and genetic variation involved in the successful establishment of a marine fish (sand goby, Pomatoschistus minutus) over a steep salinity drop from 35 PSU in the North Sea (NE Atlantic) to two PSU in the inner parts of the post-glacial Baltic Sea. ...
Complementarity and discriminatory power of genotype and otolith shape in describing the fine-scale population structure of an exploited fish, the common sole of the Eastern English Channel KU Leuven
Marine organisms show population structure at a relatively fine spatial scale, even in open habitats. The tools commonly used to assess subtle patterns of connectivity have diverse levels of resolution and can complement each other to inform on population structure. We assessed and compared the discriminatory power of genetic markers and otolith shape to reveal the population structure on evolutionary and ecological time scales of the common ...
Species integrity, introgression, and genetic variation across a coral reef fish hybrid zone KU Leuven
Hybridization and introgression are evolutionarily significant phenomena breaking down species boundaries. "Hybrid zones" (regions of species overlap and hybridization) enable quantification of hybridization frequency and examination of mechanisms driving and maintaining gene flow. The hybrid anemonefish Amphiprion leucokranos is found where parent species (A. chrysopterus; A. sandaracinos) distributions overlap. Here, we examine geographic ...
The proportion of flatfish recruitment in the North Sea potentially affected by offshore windfarms KU Leuven
Connectivity and evolution of fishes in the Southern Ocean – from species to populations KU Leuven
The marine ecosystem of the Southern Ocean is to a large extent influenced by the dynamics of the physical environment and the life cycle of polar fishes is intimately linked to it. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current and prolonged pelagic larval duration are connecting populations in the Southern Ocean. Both environmental change and anthropogenic impact on the other hand, vary considerably among areas around Antarctica. Therefore, evaluating ...