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Biodiversity Newsflash 83
October 2018
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1 | Register to the BEES Market 2018
The community of practice on Belgian Ecosystems & Society invites you to the fifth edition of the BEES Market. This year's event is hosted by INBO and ANB, and takes place in Brussels, near Tour & Taxis, at VAC Herman Teirlinck. There will be workshops, a market, Christmas trees, food & drinks, and tons of fun.
VITO, Botanic Garden Meise, Belgian Biodiversity Platform, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech will have a stand. You are all welcome to have your own, presenting your project / initiative. Just contact us!
Register by 16 November 2018 (extended deadline).
Where? Brussels, VAC Herman Teirlinck
When? 18 December 2018 |
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2 | Catalogue of Lepidoptera of Belgium
A few weeks ago, the Belgian Biodiversity Platform released the Catalogue of Lepidoptera of Belgium.
The Atlas provides information on the systematics and the distribution of Lepidoptera per province. The biology of the species is treated, ordered in a fixed pattern. Pictures are provided, also arranged in a similar scheme. This way, information can be retrieved fast and easily. The project and data belong to the Flemish Entomological Society.
Nicolas Noé, IT expert of the Belgian Biodiversity Platform, developed the website, database and management section of the website for the Flemish Entomological Society.
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3 | Belgian team wins the 2018 GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge
The LifeWatch team of Lien Reyserhove, Damiano Oldoni and Peter Desmet from the Flemish Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) cooked up a Checklist recipe, an automated routine that uses the R programming language to generate species checklist datasets. This recipe solved an ongoing need for the Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS) project, a BELSPO supported project which aims to support evidence-based policies on invasive alien species (IAS).
“TrIAS is an open science project, so we wanted to make the standardisation routine for our checklist data open and reproducible as well,” said Desmet. "The recipe has considerably streamlined our own work to publish seven checklists on alien species for Belgium. We thought it would be useful to provide a well-documented workflow for others who want to publish this type of data.”
The team is now working to re-use the open checklist data they’ve already published to create a reproducible national list of alien species in Belgium as part of the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species.
For more information, check out the GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) website, or contact André Heughebaert, our Belgian GBIF node manager.
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4 | GBIF 2018 Activity Report for Belgium
The GBIF 2018 Activity Report for Belgium provides a series of summary charts, statistics and other details about the mobilisation and use of open-access species data through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility ( GBIF) network, relating to users and participating institutions in Belgium. These metrics show status at the time of report generation, unless otherwise noted. Taken together, the elements of this report can help guide and measure progress toward the information needs for biodiversity research, as well as for national commitments on biodiversity and sustainable development. For more information, please contact André Heughebaert, our Belgian GBIF Node Manager. |
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5 | The URBES project wins the BiodivERsA Prize for Excellence and Impact
BiodivERsA has just released a video presenting the results of the ‘Urban Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’ (URBES) research project. URBES was funded under the 2010-11 BiodivERsA call on “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and their Valuation”. The video shows the results of the research project and the impacts it had on policy, practice, and society.
The Belgian Biodiversity Platform led the production of this video in the context of BiodivERsA, along with URBES researchers and the Belgian video production company, Squarefish.
Watch the video online: The URBES video
For any question, please contact :
communication@biodiversa.org
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6 | BiodivERsA Call on biodiversity & health
BiodivERsA is pleased to announce the launch of its 2018-2019 Call on the theme “Biodiversity and its influence on animal, human and plant health".
This call aims at supporting transnational research projects jointly addressing issues at the nexus of biodiversity and animal, human and/ or plant health across the different relevant spatial, and temporal scales in an effort to support evidence-based decision-making. Projects addressing only biodiversity issues or only health issues will not be considered within the scope of the call. Belgium (Belspo, FNRS and FWO) is also joining this call, as detailed here.
The Call addresses the following major themes:
- Relationship between biological diversity and animal, human and/or plant health: effects and underlying mechanisms
- Understanding and predicting the integrated effects of global change factors on biodiversity-related health issues
- Valuing/qualifying biodiversity benefits to animal, human and plant health, and promoting health-friendly biodiversity status as well as biodiversity-based health status
Deadline for submission of pre-proposals (mandatory): 16 November 2018, 16:00 CET. For more information on the call, deadlines and eligibility criteria, please consult the BiodivERsA website.
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7 | IPBES Call for experts for the IAS assessment
The Belgian IPBES National Focal Point invites you to contribute to the IPBES assessment on Invasive Alien Species (scoping document available here), to be started after the next IPBES Plenary, early May 2019. The call is being spread through various channels, including through the Belgian Forum on Invasive Alien Species. Feel free to further spread it in your networks.
We would encourage you to submit your application as soon as possible, to aid us in our sifting process and internal validation. Official deadline is 11 January 2019.
Nominees should have expertise related to the themes and skills required for the chapters of the assessment as set out in its scoping document (available here).
For any queries in preparing nominations, the process that will be followed or on the deliverables, please contact Hilde Eggermont or check the guidelines on our IPBES-National Focal Point website.
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8 | Nature - Health networking event "Natuur op Verwijzing"
The Nature-Health network event ‘Natuur op verwijzing’ took place on 4 October 2018 in Antwerp. The meeting was an opportunity for capacity building, networking and collaborations among professionals in the health and nature sectors.
The programme included lectures, workshops, walks, networking, open space, a market (with different types of initiatives from research, policy, and practice) and a panel with high level participants. Presentations, videos and pictures will soon be available on the event website.
The event was organised by the University of Antwerp, the Province of Antwerp and the Belgian Community of Practice Biodiversity and Health, as well as many other organisations. This was the closing event of the project Green Light and related to the Chair on Care and the natural living environment of the Department of Primary & Interdisciplinary Care from the University of Antwerp. The event was also a follow-up of the 2016 European OneHealth/EcoHealth workshop.
For more information, please contact Dr Hans Keune.
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9 | Pictures of the BEES Young Scientist Day
The BEES Young Scientist Day 2018 took place on 5 October 2018 at the Field Research Centre (FRC) and Ecotrons, Hasselt University, in Connecterra.
The Young Scientist Day is an informal, interactive day focused on developing interdisciplinary cooperation and exploring transdisciplinary opportunities. The objective is to exchange with peers, learning to link projects with stakeholders and policy makers... and have fun meeting new people working on similar topics.
You'll find the pictures here.
For more information, please contact Sander Jacobs, BEES Coordinator. |
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10 | Three questions to Willy De Prins, Secretary of the Flemish Entomological Society
 1. Could you describe the Catalogue of Lepidoptera?
The Atlas comprising all 2,649 Lepidoptera species ever recorded in Belgium, provides information on the systematics and the distribution per province, currently arranged in three time-periods: before 1980, between 1980 and 2004 and after 2004. Furthermore, the catalogue provides information on the larval host plants and short descriptions of all four stages in an insect's life (egg, caterpillar, pupa and adult). The Catalogue also presents many pictures illustrating adult specimens, but also the other life stages of insects, the host plants, and the habitats. The catalogue is kept updated on a daily basis, especially for the occurrences per province. Note that partly due to climate change, about ten Lepidoptera species are now recorded for the first time in Belgium every year. 2. How was the Atlas conceived, and how did the collaboration work between different institutions ? For many years, the Flemish Entomological Society maintained an offline database containing all these data. Making this information available online to the scientific community was important to us, and this became possible with the help of the Belgian Biodiversity Platform. After a few meetings with Nicolas Noé, IT expert of the Belgian Biodiversity Platform, a first version of the website was created with the possibility for specialists to make changes to the data online. Suggestions from these users have considerably improved the website and further improvements are still going to be implemented in the near future. The website was officially launched on 9 September 2018 during a meeting of the Flemish Entomological Society and it is now available to all. 3. What is your wish for the future of the Catalogue of Lepidoptera ?We hope that the Belgian Biodiversity Platform will keep on providing such services that are extremely useful to the scientific community. And we also hope that those involved in this project, the citizen scientists, and other stakeholders will participate in our efforts to add information and photographs to the Catalogue.
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