Bram Vanschoenwinkel

Vrije Universiteit Brussel | VUB · Department of Biology

Explaining the variance of local communities in a spatial-environmental matrix is one of the core interests of ecology today. Recent progress in metacommunity theory has made a substantial contribution to this field, however good empirical data in support of available theories are still relatively scarce. In this study we sampled a cluster of 36 te...

Disturbance and dispersal are two fundamental ecological processes that shape diversity patterns, yet their interaction and the underlying mechanisms are still poorly understood, and evidence from natural systems is particularly lacking. Using an invertebrate rock pool metacommunity in South Africa as a natural model system, we studied potential in...

There has been a proliferation of studies aimed at predicting the distributions of species from environmental variables despite evidence that spatial interpolation or spatially-constrained mechanistic models have comparable explanatory power. Moreover, the processes behind environmental and spatial correlations – and their interactions – remain elu...

Recent work on habitat selection has shown that the perceived quality of habitat patches may depend on the quality of adjacent patches. However, it is still unclear how local habitat selection cues can alter distribution patterns in metacommunities at a larger (regional) scale. We studied mosquito oviposition in pond landscapes that differed in the...

Islands are fundamental model systems in ecology, biogeography, and evolutionary biology. However, terrestrial islands, unlike their aquatic counterparts, have received comparatively less attention. Among these land islands, inselbergs (i.e. isolated rock outcrops with diverse lithologies and a modest topographical prominence) stand out as iconic e...

Globally, 41% of amphibian species are threatened with extinction. Temporary ponds are crucial ecosystems for amphibian breeding where large predators are typically absent, therefore reducing the predation pressure on their larvae. Also, in these ecosystems large branchiopods (LB) proliferate, becoming a significant food source for several species....

Biodiversity loss and declining ecosystem functioning is spreading at alarming rates worldwide. In this context, pondscapes, including temporary ponds, have emerged as potential Nature-based Solutions that offer valuable ecosystem services and connect freshwater habitats as stepping-stone ecosystems. However, agricultural intensification and hydrol...

Loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services (ESS) continues at alarming rates globally. In this context, pondscapes including temporary ponds have emerged as potential Nature-based Solutions which provide multiple ecosystem services and connect freshwater habitats. However, agricultural intensification and hydrological modifications have threatened...

Mosquitoes are known to choose oviposition habitats actively based on their suitability for survival of their offspring. They thus avoid laying eggs in dangerous habitats with aquatic predators through detection of their cues. Visual, tactile, and chemical cues emitted by certain predators have been shown to reduce oviposition in some mosquitoes, w...

Over the last decades, a decline in insect populations has been observed. Public lighting infrastructure is both expanding to previously unlit areas, and already existing infrastructure is being replaced LED lighting. Consequently, there is a growing imperative to investigate the impact of artificial light at night (ALAN) on nocturnal insect commun...

In many countries, successful control of larval mosquito populations for malaria control is still hindered by poor knowledge of preferred breeding habitats and natural factors limiting larval abundance. In Africa, preferred breeding habitats for malaria mosquitoes vary regionally and for many regions, they are still not well known. Moreover, variab...

When waders gather in mixed‐species flocks to feed on benthic prey, differences in morphological traits, foraging strategies and prey selection may allow different species to optimise their energy intake while reducing competition. As the effect of the fine‐scale spatial distribution of resources on energy intake is unknown, we simulated the foragi...

The biological larvicide Bacillus thuringiensis var. israelensis (Bti) is used worldwide to control reproduction of mosquitoes in freshwater habitats. However, its impact on the ecosystem including nontarget species is often unclear. In addition, it is unknown how Bti larvicide may interact with local mosquito predators to shape oviposition site se...

Developmental plasticity can help organisms to survive in temporally variable environments. However, it is not well understood how variation in life history plasticity helps species coexist in heterogeneous environments. Here, we investigate the extent to which life‐history plasticity explains species distributions in a diverse assemblage of odonat...

Increasing pCO 2 in freshwaters across the globe will likely be accompanied by acidification. Although this has been linked to reduced calcification, growth, and survival in several marine species, similar responses in freshwater organisms remain largely unexplored. Here, we investigated the direct effects of elevated pCO 2 and associated acidifica...

In variable environments the production of dormant life stages can help organisms to avoid periods that are unsuitable for growth and reproduction, and different species may rely on different cues to break dormancy. However, it is still unclear to what extent variation in germination strategies can help to explain variation in the distributions of...

Determining the main pollinators and the factors that control their abundance is a prerequisite for improving the production of many crops, including the globally important cash crop cacao (Theobroma cacao L.). Yet, the identity and the breeding habitats of cacao pollinators remain controversial since they are very difficult to identify morphologic...

Large branchiopods are a key component of the fauna of temporary ponds and play an important role in the functioning of these vulnerable ecosystems. Owing to the establishment of new settlements and agricultural expansion, temporary ponds in Tanzania are disappearing at an alarming rate whilst little is known about their diversity and ecology. We c...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent global development ambitions, but achieving these goals depends on local-level application. Many local governments, especially in countries with emerging economies, lack the capacity and resources to integrate SDGs into municipal planning. The feasibility of local implementation is particularly cha...

Environmental risks posed by widespread pesticide application have attracted global attention. Currently, chemical risk assessments in aquatic environments rely on extrapolation of toxicity data from classic model species. However, similar assessments based on local species could be complementary, particularly for unusual living environments such a...

By 2030, all public lighting in Flanders, Belgium will be replaced by LED technology. However, artificial lighting properties, such as flickering due to light modulation, influence nocturnal insects. This research describes the development of a novel measurement device that can control the flickering frequency, luminous flux and correlated color te...

The degree to which the distribution of mangrove forests will be impacted by climate change depends on the dispersal and establishment of sea-faring propagules, which drive forest rejuvenation, gene flow and range expansion. Climate change affects sea surface density via changes in temperature and salinity. However, these changes have not been mapp...

Context. Previous research has shown the presence of an endangered humpback whale population breeding off the Pacific coast of Central America. However, little is known about the density, size, social-group structure and spatial habitat use of this subpopulation. Aim. The study goal was to characterise a potential breeding subpopulation of humpback...

In metacommunity ecology, a major focus has been on combining observational and analytical approaches to identify the role of critical assembly processes, such as dispersal limitation and environmental filtering, but this work has largely ignored temporal community dynamics. Here, we develop a “virtual ecologist” approach to evaluate assembly proce...

Dissolved CO 2 levels (pCO 2 ) are increasing in lentic freshwaters across the globe. Recent studies have shown that this will impact the nutritional quality of phytoplankton as primary producers. However, the extent to which freshwater zooplankton may also be directly affected remains unclear. We test this in three model species representative of...

In many areas, the main sources of mosquito vectors are not natural habitats but small artificial water bodies that are provided unintentionally by humans. Such container habitats have been linked to outbreaks of dengue fever and other arboviral diseases. However, in many parts of the world the possible risks associated with container habitats have...

Aim Waterbirds that travel seasonally between Europe and Africa use wetlands along four major Palearctic‐Afrotropical flyways. However, it is unknown to what extent the overall connectivity of these flyways may be threatened by ongoing habitat loss and degradation. Here, we contrasted the wetland connectivity along these four flyways, applying grap...

Dissolved CO 2 levels (pCO 2 ) are increasing in lentic freshwaters across the globe. Recent studies have shown that this will impact the nutritional quality of phytoplankton as primary producers, however, the extent to which freshwater zooplankton may also be directly affected remains unclear. We test this in three model species representative of...

Most large branchiopods inhabit endorheic waters that are of a temporary nature, atypical for the wet tropics but common in (semi)arid regions. Due to their ancient history and conserved morphology, they are often referred to as “living fossils.” Adapted to cope with intermittent droughts, large branchiopods produce long lived resting eggs that acc...

Background Chemical communication is an important aspect of the behavioural ecology of a wide range of mammals. In dogs and other carnivores, anal sac glands are thought to convey information to conspecifics by secreting a pallet of small volatile molecules produced by symbiotic bacteria. Because these glands are unique to carnivores, it is unclear...

Pesticides are crucial to improve agricultural productivity, but often adversely affect surrounding aquatic systems and their fauna. To determine the environmental risk of pesticides, routine ecotoxicological tests are performed on several organisms, including standard fish models. However, these typically do not include fish species from variable...

Our current, empirical understanding of the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function is based on two information sources. First, controlled experiments which show generally positive relationships. Second, observational field data which show variable relationships. This latter source coupled with a lack of observed declines in local...

Environmental change jeopardizes the survival of species from variable environments by making the occurrence of favorable conditions less predictable. For organisms with long‐lived propagules (e.g., spores, eggs, or seeds), the theory of diversified bet hedging (DBH) predicts that delayed hatching over different growing seasons can help populations...

Recent evidence suggests predators may change colonization rates of prey in nearby predator-free patches as an example of context-dependent habitat selection. Such remote predator effects can be positive when colonizers are redirected to nearby patches (habitat compression), or negative when nearby patches are avoided (risk contagion). However, it...

• In many biomes, a variety of different small freshwater habitats, such as pools and phytotelmata can occur together in the same habitat matrix. However, both the biodiversity and the functioning of these ecosystems remain poorly known. • Three freshwater habitat types in a tropical West African biodiversity hotspot were studied. • The study demon...

Mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit are a global public health threat that affects most human populations. Mosquito abundances are strongly linked to the number of suitable larval habitats available. However, it is still not well understood how different land uses impact larval habitat quality in different parts of the world. We investigated...

The occurrence of the amphibious plant Elatine gussonei in Mediterranean temporary ponds is patchy and has a strong stochastic component. It is however as yet unknown what affects the presence of E. gussonei in such temporary freshwater rockpools (TFRs). The range of conditions within which it survives and reproduces has also not yet been fully cha...

Metacommunity ecology has focused on using observational and analytical approaches to disentangle the role of critical assembly processes, such as dispersal limitation and environmental filtering. Many methods have been proposed for this purpose, most notably multivariate analyses of species abundance and its association with variation in spatial a...

Granite and/or gneiss inselbergs are excellent examples of geomorphologic stable island habitats, considered as Old, Climatically Buffered, Infertile Landscapes (OCBILs). However, contrary to oceanic islands, their underlying drivers of diversity patterns remain to be investigated. Here, we studied 24 inselbergs in south-eastern Brazil, aiming to u...

In the past decade, unoccupied aerial vehicles (UAVs or drones) have emerged as powerful tools for ecologists, and the quality and diversity of information they can reconstruct is increasing. Rocky outcrops or inselbergs are complex three-dimensional (3D) ecosystems with several spatial microhabitats that are difficult to characterize using ground-...

It is typically assumed that for species to persist in working landscapes, they must either persist alongside agricultural pressures (i.e. land-sharing) or become restricted to remnant patches of natural habitat (i.e land-sparing). However, a third possibility is that species survive in stable ecological refuges that then supply the surrounding mat...

The metacommunity concept has the potential to integrate local and regional dynamics within a general community ecology framework. To this end, the concept must move beyond the discrete archetypes that have largely defined it (e.g. neutral vs. species sorting) and better incorporate local scale species interactions and coexistence mechanisms. Here,...

In many aquatic plant taxa, classification based on morphology has always been difficult. Molecular markers revealed that the complexity in several of these aquatic taxa could be addressed to recurrent hybridization events and cryptic species diversity. The submerged macrophyte genus Ruppia is one of these aquatic genera with a complex taxonomy due...

Recent findings suggest that the colonization of habitat patches may be affected by the quality of surrounding patches. For instance, patches that lack predators may be avoided when located near others with predators, a pattern known as risk contagion. Alternatively, predator avoidance might also redirect dispersal towards nearby predator‐free patc...

Population growth and economic development have resulted in increased water demands, threatening freshwater resources. In riverine ecosystems, continuous monitoring of the river quality is needed to follow up on their ecological condition in the light of water pollution and habitat degradation. However, in many parts of the world, such monitoring i...

• Assessing the quality of wetlands as refuelling areas for migrating waterbirds based on resource distribution patterns is challenging. Resources in wetlands can vary both horizontally and vertically and may be differentially available to different bird species at different times of the year. Therefore, the extent to which wetland quality can be g...

Most temporary pond zooplankton species produce drought-resistant eggs that accumulate in the sediment and form an egg bank. When a pond dries and the egg bank is exposed, wind erodes eggs and wind action has been suggested as an important determinant of population demographics. While field observations suggest that egg bank erosion may be highest...

The metacommunity concept has the potential to integrate local and regional dynamics within a general community ecology framework. To this end, the concept must move beyond the discrete archetypes that have largely defined it (e.g. neutral vs. species sorting) and better incorporate local scale species interactions and coexistence mechanisms. Here,...

Understanding the influence of land-use activities on river quality has been a key focus of river monitoring programs worldwide. However, defining which land-use spatial scale is relevant remains elusive. In this study, therefore, we contrasted the influence of land use on river quality using three types of land-use estimators, namely circular buff...

Many organisms that live in inland standing waters produce dormant life stages that can accumulate in propagule banks to survive temporarily unfavourable periods. These egg banks have important effects on the ecology of populations and communities in terms of phenology, population densities, the probability of extinction, species diversity and habi...

In the tropics, limestone caves in karstic areas are known for their unique biodiversity. However, many caves remain unstudied and little is known about underlying gradients that determine diversity and biomass in aquatic microhabitats. Here, we sampled zooplankton and benthos in a set of 12 aquatic caves, locally called closed cenotes in Yucatán,...

1. Intense anthropogenic disturbance threatens temporary pond ecosystems and their associated fauna across the Palearctic. Since fairy shrimps (Crustacea, Branchiopoda) are endemic to temporary ponds, populations are declining due to habitat loss and it is important to define adequate units for conservation. 2. Phylogeographic reconstructions, base...

Dispersal allows species to shift their distributions in response to changing climate conditions. As a result, dispersal is considered a key process contributing to a species' long‐term persistence. For many passive dispersers, fluid dynamics of wind and water fuel these movements and different species have developed remarkable adaptations for util...

Bromeliads are common plants in the Neotropics. Being epiphytic, they are often incorrectly considered as parasites and removed from agroforestry systems. However, their water-filled leaf axils provide habitats for a diverse group of aquatic organisms, potentially including cacao pollinating dipterans which could be beneficial to local farmers. Thu...

Ecological communities change across spatial and environmental gradients due to (i) changes in species composition, (ii) changes in the frequency or strength of interactions or (iii) changes in the presence of the interactions. Here we use the communities of aquatic invertebrates inhabiting clusters of bromeliad phytotelms along the Brazilian coast...

Other analyses. All of the adonis, regression and permutation output are included here. This file contains Tables C-E and Figs E-I. (PDF)

Validation of markov network method. We validated the method by confirming it gave the same results as known interaction strengths and could predict trophic interaction strengths in simple bromeliad food webs. We took two different approaches to this confirmation. First, we ran the Markov network analysis on a three species module from Costa Rica w...

Partitioning beta diversity. We partitioned beta diversity using Baselga’s (2009) method. In this supplementary file we show the equations used to partition beta diversity. (PDF)

Environmental variation between sites. For every bromeliad, we measured a suite of environmental variables to assess the amount and quality of habitat available to the invertebrates. Then we tested for differences between sites in the bromeliad-level environmental variables. We also obtained precipitation data for every site. This file contains Tab...

While escape responses are shown to differ in areas with varying levels of human disturbance, it is not known to what extent these reactions depend on the composition of local species assemblages. We investigated variation in three flight response metrics for the invasive Canada Goose (Branta canadensis) in Belgium in three locations with different...

Ecological networks change across spatial and environmental gradients due to (i) changes in species composition or (ii) changes in the frequency or strength of interactions. Here we use the communities of aquatic invertebrates inhabiting clusters of bromeliad phytotelms along the Brazilian coast as a model system for examining turnover in the prope...

Both constitutive and inducible antipredator strategies are ubiquitous in nature and serve to maximize fitness under a predation threat. Inducible strategies may be favored over constitutive defenses depending on their relative cost and benefit and temporal variability in predator presence. In African temporary ponds, annual killifish of the genus...

Many organisms are transported passively and make use of the energy of natural phenomena or other organisms to disperse. However, not all species are equally likely to disperse over long distances. In mangroves, which possess seafaring propagules, it is largely unknown which species are more likely to reach the ocean and contribute to long-distance...