The Federal Government of Belgium (Dutch: Federale regering, French: Gouvernement fédéral, German: Föderalregierung) exercises executive power in the Kingdom of Belgium. It consists of ministers and secretary of state ("junior", or deputy-ministers who do not sit in the Council of Ministers) drawn from the political parties which form the governing coalition. The federal government is led by the Prime Minister of Belgium, and ministers lead ministries of the government. Ministers together form the Council of Ministers, which is the supreme executive organ of the government (equivalent to a cabinet).Formally, executive power is vested in the king, who formally appoints the ministers. However, under the Constitution of Belgium, the king is not politically responsible for exercising his powers, but must exercise it through the ministers. The king's acts are not valid unless countersigned by a minister, and the countersigning minister assumes political responsibility for the act. Thus, in practice, the ministers do the actual day-to-day work of governing.
Members of the Daphnia longispina O. F. Müller, 1776 group (Branchiopoda: Cladocera) are keystone grazers in freshwater bodies around the world. Multiple cryptic species have been revealed and partially described within the last 20 years. However, high phenotypic plasticity, hybridization, and the limited number of available genetic markers have hampered attempts to fully explore species diversity and speciation factors in this group. Here, we present the first dated phylogeny of the complete D. longispina group using whole-genome data. Multiple mitochondrial relationships including divergent mitochondrial lineages are not supported by nuclear DNA. Additionally, several morphologically distinct species within two species complexes show a low genealogical divergence index, raising the question of lumping by the method. Species trees based on SNPs and gene trees differ strongly in bootstrap support for older nodes. Concordance factors do not strongly support either phylogeny, most likely due to prevalent incomplete lineage sorting. Our analyses indicate that geography has a stronger effect on the speciation of the D. longispina group than the trophic status of their habitat or introgression. We only find evidence of ancient introgression between species known to hybridize concurrently. This study provides novel insights into the species relationships in the D. longispina group.
Research on the critically endangered European eel (Anguilla anguilla L.) has long been focused on the continental part of the species' wide distribution. Comparatively, we know very little about its ecology in the small stream habitats of the oceanic Macaronesian islands and whether it differs from that of continental estuaries, rivers and lakes. We used acoustic telemetry to investigate the movements of 36 yellow-staged eels for 1 year at a typical Azorean stream, with small pools below waterfalls interchanged by riffles and runs. Tagged eels had a restricted movement range and mostly stayed in a given pool. Such limited movements render this part of the population particularly susceptible to changes in the stream, which can seasonally run dry at some parts. These findings likely reflect the extreme habitat limitation in Azorean streams, and possibly an evolutionary adaptation to ensure growth under limited food supply and high competitive pressure. These specificities should be taken into account in future management plans for the European eel and its Azorean habitats.
Thermal cameras on unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly being used in environmental and ecological research, including hydrology, wildfire detection and prediction, urban heat studies, precision agriculture, ecosystem functioning, wildlife monitoring and microclimate studies. Converting raw thermal signals to quantitative land surface temperature (LST) values requires careful application of correction procedures. However, these steps are often overlooked or ignored—either due to limited expertise in thermal remote sensing or because of the technical complexity involved. Neglecting corrections for atmospheric effects and surface emissivity can lead to discrepancies of up to 5°C in the resulting LST estimate. We introduce theRmalUAV, an R package that facilitates LST processing with two workflows: an orthomosaic‐based and an image‐based approach. The orthomosaic workflow applies a single function to the entire dataset, whereas the image‐based workflow can account for variations in environmental conditions during the flight that affect surface temperature. The package corrects for atmospheric effects, background temperature, spatial emissivity and weather fluctuations, incorporating a novel method to handle rapid illumination changes. The package currently supports 11 common thermal sensors. It also includes tools for data cleaning, co‐registration and reporting. We demonstrate both the importance of the workflow and its implementation using two distinct case studies to highlight its versatility. The main text presents a detailed example using the research‐grade TeAx ThermalCapture 2.0. A complementary example, featuring the more commercially oriented DJI Mavic 3T, is provided in the . For comprehensive guidance and tutorials, readers are directed to the package vignette and its companion website.
Gardens represent important yet often overlooked frontlines for biodiversity change. Many ornamental plants that later become invasive are first cultivated in private or public gardens, while at the same time gardens are also a focal point for the introduction of invertebrate species through the plant trade. Private gardens are difficult to access for researchers to monitor the potential arrival of invasive species and are therefore best observed by their users. Involving gardeners in reporting ornamental plants that are exhibiting weedy or invasive tendency in gardens has been shown to generate useful records that have been used in horizon scanning and risk assessment approaches in Britain and Ireland. The Plant Alert project has been running since 2019 and so far generated more than 1000 records of 322 species. The approach has now been expanded to four additional European countries (Belgium, Finland, Portugal, Romania) as part of the OneSTOP project’s Living Lab network that bring together local stakeholders — citizens, researchers, local authorities, nature conservation organisations and businesses. In a second citizen science approach, these OneSTOP Living Lab communities collaboratively selected to focus on flatworm species as one of the emerging invasive invertebrate species threats from gardens. Again, the successful Belgian Flatworm Watch Project has demonstrated the usefulness of the approach which has now been expanded to Finland, Great Britain and Portugal. Both projects have been implemented using R Shiny Apps that have been designed to submit all records into iNaturalist from where they feed into GBIF and contribute to automated alert systems that notify relevant stakeholders, such as local conservation managers, about emerging invasive species threats. By integrating these data streams into the early warning and rapid response system being developed within OneSTOP, we aim to establish sentinel gardens as a scalable, participatory detection method, complementing novel technologies such as computer vision and eDNA. Furthermore, the use of Shiny Apps also offers the advantage that additional information about the reported species can be collected that is relevant for potential risk assessments and cannot be easily collected in existing recording apps. This poster presentation will present first results from these projects and demonstrate the Shiny App approach.
The delineation of nature by political borders and the restricted accessibility of ecological research data present intertwined challenges to global biodiversity conservation. We examined how the nationalization of biodiversity and the privatization of ecological data hinder effective cross-boundary management of natural resources and perpetuate socioeconomic inequities. The ecological consequences of imposing geopolitical boundaries on species distributions include fragmented management regimes, inconsistent protection across ranges, and misaligned conservation priorities for transboundary populations. Biases inherent in national species assessments lead to systematic misclassification of conservation status, distorted estimates of biodiversity change, and inefficient allocation of conservation resources across borders. The limitations arising from anthropocentric terminology in conservation science can reinforce false native-non-native dichotomies, obscure context-dependent ecological impacts, and undermine transboundary management coherence. We argue that existing conservation frameworks have struggled to address these challenges at scale due to entrenched institutional constraints. As a way forward, we advocate for supranational ecological governance grounded in open-access data, equitable funding, and collaborative frameworks that transcend political boundaries.
