FishBase-SeaLifeBase symposium in RBINS (2-3 September), co-organised by the BBPF
Celebrating 35 years of FishBase and 20 years of SeaLifeBase
Join Us for the 2025 FishBase & SeaLifeBase Symposium at RBINS
For 35 years, FishBase (www.fishbase.org) has served as the world’s most comprehensive and trusted online database of fish species. With scientifically validated information on more than 36,000 species and nearly 400,000 unique users each month, FishBase ranks among the top 1% of all cited items published since the early 20th century.
Its sister platform, SeaLifeBase (www.sealifebase.org), extends the same model to cover over 70,000 non-fish marine species. It attracts more than 300,000 monthly users, supporting researchers, educators, and conservationists worldwide.
Since 2001, both platforms have been maintained by the FishBase Consortium, a global collaboration of 15 leading museums, universities, and research institutes. Each year, the Consortium hosts its annual meeting alongside the FishBase & SeaLifeBase Symposium, creating a dynamic forum to engage with the local scientific community, highlight current research, and foster new collaborations.
In 2025, the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS), as a candidate member of the Consortium, is proud to host both the Consortium meeting and the symposium.
This free, hybrid event will feature invited presentations from scientists across the Consortium and beyond, covering a broad spectrum of research on fishes and marine life, from the local scale to global ecosystems, from morphological studies to cutting-edge genetics, from fundamental science to applied solutions, from data-poor regions to data-rich environments or from biodiversity databases to ecological models.
This symposium offers a unique opportunity to explore the diversity of fish and marine life studies, discover the impactful work carried out by RBINS, other Belgian institutions and the FishBase Consortium, and strengthen partnerships with the FishBase community.
We warmly invite researchers, students, and professionals in marine science and biodiversity to join us in advancing the knowledge and conservation of aquatic life.
Venue: Big Auditorium, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels, Belgium
Dates: 2-3 September 2025
Registration: via this link; deadline 20 August 2025 for in-person attendance
Abstract deadline (presentations are by invitation only): 25 July 2025
Contact: FishBase-SeaLifeBase(a)naturalsciences.be
The following talks have so far been confirmed:
- Rainer Froese (GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany) - What are they waiting for? Some thoughts about the timing of reproduction
- Imane Rahmouni (Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco) - Diversity and multiple origins of Moroccan monogenean parasites and their cyprinid hosts: tracing a complex evolutionary history
- Ana Santacruz (University of Münster, Germany) - Host–symbionts crosstalk in metabolism and inflammation during cavefish evolution
- Maarten Vanhove (Hasselt University, Belgium) - Breeding critically endangered European weatherfish in captivity in Flanders (Belgium): a holistic approach also conserves threatened parasitic flatworms
- Nikol Kmentova (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium) - One Health perspectives on marine invasions: the case of Callinectes sapidus and parasite transmission in Moroccan lagoons
- Miriam Shigoley (Liège University, Belgium) - The missing link in fish records: parasites and why we should care
- Tiziana Gobbin (Hasselt University, Belgium) - Darwin’s nightmare revisited: a dual decline of cichlids and their parasites
- Archimède Mushagalusa Mulega (Centre de Recherche en Hydrobiologie, Democratic Republic of the Congo) - Morphological and phylogenetic analyses of species of Bagrobdella (Monogenea: Dactylogyridae) parasitising African auchenoglanidid catfishes combined with barcoding of Auchenoglanis occidentalis provide insight into host taxonomy
- Martina Topić (Hasselt University, Belgium) - Diversity of fish ectoparasites in a South Carolina estuary, and the role of such data in online databases
- Armando Cruz Laufer (Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) - Parasite biodiversity and trophic dynamics of mangrove fishes in a Senegalese Marine Protected Area
- Olivier Lambert (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium) - The fish and the whale: exceptional preservation cases from the Miocene of Peru inform on past trophic relationships between cetaceans, clupeoid fish and lamniform sharks
- Lauren Sallan (Okinawa Insitute of Science and Technology, Japan) - A morphospace for all fishes: ecomorphological traits date the assembly of modern fish form diversity to the Paleozoic
- Stijn Goolaerts (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium) - Colour patterns and pigments in 350 myr old marine invertebrates from Belgium
- Johan Vellekoop (Leuven University, Belgium) - On the impact of Ypresian warming on marine fish populations in the Paris Basin, France
- Kristiaan Hoedemakers (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium) - The otolith collection at RBINS
- Sebastien Olive (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium) - A new ‘acanthothoracid’ placoderm from the Arctic Canada (Early Devonian) and its bearing on the evolution of jaws and teeth
- Nazli Demirel (Istanbul University, Türkiye) - Life-history variation in invasive fishes: a Mediterranean FishBase approach
- Rhea Maesele (Research Institute for Nature and Forrest, Belgium) - Untangling the loach labyrinth: Misgurnus mysteries in Flanders, Belgium
- Alex Tilley (WorldFish, Malaysia) - Artificial intelligence in small-scale fisheries
- Leen Vandepitte (Flanders Marine Institute, Belgium) - Exploring fish in the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS): how FishBase completes WoRMS and its many sub-registers, providing excellent service to the global marine biodiversity community
- Kirk Larsen (Conservation X Labs, USA) - From research to reef: mobile ai tools for fish identification and citizen science
- Tuan Nguyen (Hasselt University, Belgium) - The World Archives of Species Perception (WASP) project: what do the public think of fish?
- Geraldine Mertens (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium) - infraFADA: upgrading the taxonomic backbone of global freshwater animal biodiversity research infrastructures
- Willem Coetzer (South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity, South Africa) - Updating FishBase with freshwater and marine information from southern Africa and the Western Indian Ocean
- Daniel Pauly (University of British Columbia, Canada) - Doubling down on the Gill-Oxygen Limitation Theory
- Genevieve Lacroix (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium) - Integrating FishBase and SeaLifeBase into marine ecosystem models
- Athanassios Tsikliras (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) - A series of fisheries, ecosystem, and bio-economic models in the Aegean Sea
- Fabrice Teletchea (Université de Lorraine, France) - Levels of domestication in fish: update and perspectives for global aquaculture
- Daniel Pauly (University of British Columbia, Canada) - Documenting the marine biodiversity of the world’s archipelagos: practical and theoretical considerations
- Jessica Meeuwig (University of Western Australia, Australia) - Beyond diversity, abundance and size: a smorgasbord of applications of video-based methods to marine ecology and conservation
- Marine Banse (Liège University, Belgium) - When evolution clicks: congruence between phylogeny, morphology and acoustics in Holocentridae
- Anton Vandeputte (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium) - Advancing Southern Ocean fish knowledge: The SCARFISH contribution to FishBase and SeaLifeBase
- Elysée Rutakaza Nzigire (Centre de Recherche en Hydrobiologie, DR Congo) - Resource partitioning and dietary shifts in Oreochromis niloticus and Oreochromis leucostictus in Lake Edward and Lake George (East Africa)
- Felegush Erarto (Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia) - Geometric morphometric otolith shape analysis of Labeobarbus species in Lake Tana, Ethiopia
- Hendrik Segers (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium) - The long and winding road towards the List of Available Names in Zoology (LAN), partim genus- and species-group level names in Phylum Rotifera
- Heleen Maetens (Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium) - Fish without borders: unravelling hidden diversity in sawfin barbs from the Lake Edward system
- Nathan Vrancken (Hasselt University, Belgium) - FishBased and “ParasiteBased” education for the digital age: a publicly accessible virtual learning environment
- Margaret Fafa Awushie Akwetey (University of Cape Coast, Ghana) - Ethnobiological documentation of marine invertebrates in Elmina and Tema fishing communities along the coast of Ghana
- Deng Palomares (University of British Columbia, Canada) - SeaLifeBase at 20: challenges and opportunities
- Cornelia Nauen (Mundus Maris, Belgium) - FishBase and other stories at UNOC3
- Kelle Moreau (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium) - Science behind the trade: safeguarding vulnerable fish species through CITES
- Jos Snoeks (Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium) - Twenty-five years of FishBase consortium membership and twenty years of capacity building in the Africa Museum: the good, the bad and the ugly
- Anne-Julie Rochette (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium) - Building capacities on taxonomy, ecosystem monitoring and science-based decision-making for sustainable fisheries in Africa and Asia
- Yves Samyn (Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium) - The series Abc Taxa as a capacity building initiative & tool to advance taxonomy and collection management
- Laban Musinguzi (National Fisheries Resources research Institute, Uganda) - The integration of FishBase into decision support tools for the conservation of fishes of Uganda
- Rodrigue Pelebe (University of Parakou, Benin) - North-South collaboration for research using relatively unexplored approaches at the local level for the benefit of freshwater and brackish water fish biodiversity in Benin: achievements, challenges and prospects
- Cheuk-Ho Wu (University of Hong Kong, ,China) - Fishy business: using genetic diversity to hook sustainable fisheries
- Leona Milec (Nord University, Norway) - High expectation, low implementation: perceptions of African fish and fisheries experts on genetic indicators in fisheries management
- Maarten Van Steenberge (Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences, Belgium) - ‘Reconstructing freshwater biogeography using catfish genomes
- Marc Kochzius (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium) - Connectivity of coral reefs and mangroves in the Indian Ocean
- Nergiz Dukan (Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Belgium) - From species lists to sequences: building regional genetic databases by leveraging FishBase and SeaLifeBase
- Lea Fourchault (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) - Fish community structure and diversity in the Tampolo Lagoon, Madagascar: an integrative ichthyological inventory
- Christopher Monk (GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany) - Interspecific allometric scaling of home-range size in teleost fishes
- Donna Dimarchopoulou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) - Fish n’ Ships Aegean Sea - A tabletop dive into marine conservation
Organising committee:
Maarten Van Steenberge (RBINS)
Tobias Musschoot (Belgian Biodiversity Platform)
Geneviève Lacroix (RBINS)
Maarten Vanhove (Hasselt University)
Nikol Kmentová (RBINS, Hasselt University)