Bruno Danis

Université Libre de Bruxelles | ULB · Department of Biology of Organisms (DBO)

The TANGO1 expedition ventured to accumulate new data on the responses of marine ecosystems to shifts in ice regimes in the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), taking full advantage of a nimble sampling platform, the R/V Australis, a steel hulled, fully rigged motor sailor. TANGO1 took place between February and March 2023, sampling two main locations...

The underexplored intertidal ecosystems of Antarctica are facing rapid changes in important environmental factors. Associated with temperature increase, reduction in coastal ice will soon expose new ice-free areas that will be colonized by local or distant biota. To enable detection of future changes in faunal composition, a biodiversity baseline i...

The present study reports the first experimental microplastic-mediated transfer of a key PCB congener into adult specimens of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus. Three experiments were conducted to assess whether 14C-PCB- 153 adsorbed onto negatively buoyant microplastics (MPs) (500–600 μm) is bioavailable to the sea urchin: (1) exposure to a low...

Antipatharians (black corals) are major components of mesophotic ecosystems in the Mediterranean Sea. The arborescent species Antipathella subpinnata has received particular attention as it is the most abundant and forms dense forests harbouring high levels of biodiversity. This species is currently categorized as "Near Threatened" in the IUCN Red...

Aim In the context of intensifying threats of climate change on marine communities, ecological models are widely applied for conservation strategies, though polar studies remain scarce given the limited number of datasets available. Correlative (e.g. species distribution models, SDM) and mechanistic (e.g. dynamic energy budget models, DEB) modellin...

Multiple initiatives have called for large-scale representative networks of marine protected areas (MPAs). MPAs should be ecologically representative to be effective, but in large, remote regions this can be difficult to quantify and assess. We present a novel bioregionalization for the Southern Ocean, which uses the modelled circumpolar habitat im...

The fate and toxicity of ingested marine microplastics (MPs) has been a major concern in aquatic ecotoxicology for the last decade. Although their ingestion by a wide range of marine organisms has been proven, the uptake of MPs within organs is not yet fully understood and relies on the ability of ingested microplastics to transfer from the gut to...

The western Antarctic Peninsula is facing rapid environmental changes and many recent publications stress the need to gain new knowledge regarding ecosystems responses to these changes. In the framework of the Belgica 121 expedition, we tested the use of a nimble vessel with a moderate environmental footprint as an approach to tackle the urgent nee...

The Southern Ocean is one of the most exposed regions to climate-related changes on our planet. Better understanding of the current biodiversity and past speciation events, as well as implementation of conservation actions and accurate identification of organisms to species level in this unique environment, is fundamental. In this study, two specie...

Sea stars (Echinodermata: Asteroidea) are a key component of Southern Ocean benthos, with 16% of the known sea star species living there. In temperate marine environments, sea stars commonly play an important role in food webs, acting as keystone species. However, trophic ecology and functional role of Southern Ocean sea stars are still poorly know...

Aim The Western Antarctic Peninsula is challenged by climate change and increasing maritime traffic that together facilitate the introduction of marine non‐native species from warmer regions neighbouring the Southern Ocean. Ballast water exchange has been frequently reported as an introduction vector. This study uses a Lagrangian approach to model...

The Kerguelen Islands are part of the French Southern Territories, located at the limit of the Indian and Southern oceans. They are highly impacted by climate change, and coastal marine areas are particularly at risk. Assessing the responses of species and populations to environmental change is challenging in such areas for which ecological modelli...

This dataset relates to the biodiversity census carried out during the Belgica 121 (B121) expedition to the Western Antarctic Peninsula from February to March 2019. One of the aims of the campaign was to explore the surroundings of the Gerlache Strait and to carry out a detailed biodiversity census focusing on inter- and subtidal shallow-water area...

Macroalgae play a structuring role in benthic ecosystems, which makes it very important to monitor their cover rates and study their community structures and changes in time. Such studies are usually led by autonomous divers and often do not generate sufficient data to provide enough material for strategically-sound conservation plans. This paper d...

Background Genome-wide data are invaluable to characterize differentiation and adaptation of natural populations. Reduced representation sequencing (RRS) subsamples a genome repeatedly across many individuals. However, RRS requires careful optimization and fine-tuning to deliver high marker density while being cost-efficient. The number of genomic...

The Southern Ocean is undergoing rapid environmental changes that are likely to have a profound impact on marine life, as organisms are adapted to sub-zero temperatures and display specific adaptations to polar conditions. However, species ecological and physiological responses to environmental changes remain poorly understood at large spatial scal...

Ecological modelling is nowadays widely used to highlight the environmental conditions that influence the species ecological niche and better understand their response to environmental changes. Methodological challenges are however present for Southern Ocean marine case studies and it is important to evaluate the performance and limits of such mode...

This dataset relates to the biodiversity census carried out during the Belgica 121 (B121) expedition to the Western Antarctic Peninsula from February to March 2019. One of the aims of the campaign was to explore the surroundings of the Gerlache Strait and to carry out a detailed biodiversity census focusing on inter- and subtidal shallow-water area...

Species distribution modelling studies the relationship between species occurrence records and their environmental setting, providing a valuable approach to predicting species distribution in the Southern Ocean (SO), a challenging region to investigate due to its remoteness and extreme weather and sea conditions. The specificity of SO studies, incl...

The West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is one of the most rapidly changing regions in the world, in great part due to anthropogenic climate change. Steep environmental gradients in water temperature, sea ice cover and glacier melting influence are observed, but much is left to document about significance of those shifts for biological communities and e...

The potential for biological colonisation of Antarctic shores is an increasingly important topic in the context of anthropogenic warming. Successful Antarctic invasions until now have been recorded exclusively from terrestrial habitats. While non‐native marine species such as crabs, mussels and tunicates have already been reported from Antarctic co...

An integrative approach is crucial in discrimination of species, especially for taxa that are difficult to identify based on morphological characters. In this study, we combine genetics and morphology to assess the diversity of Pterasteridae, a sea star family diversified in deep-sea and polar environments. Because of their derived anatomy and the...

One important aspect of marine plastic pollution is that small particles are ubiquitously present in seawater and can transport a large variety of co-contaminants. The sorption-desorption kinetics of these co-contaminants sorbed to microplastics (MPs) are not fully understood, partially due to the lack of any standardised procedures between studies...

Genome-wide data are invaluable to characterize differentiation and adaptation of natural populations. Reduced representation sequencing (RRS) subsamples a genome repeatedly across many individuals. However, RRS requires careful optimization and fine-tuning to deliver high marker density while being cost-efficient. The number of genomic fragments c...

Benthic life in the Southern Ocean (SO) features unique life history traits and species assemblages, but the origin and evolution of many of these taxonomic groups is still unclear. Sea stars (Asteroidea) are a diversified and abundant component of benthic ecosystems in the SO, in which they can play key ecological roles. Former studies suggest tha...

Significant environmental changes have already been documented in the Southern Ocean (e.g. sea water temperature increase and salinity drop) but its marine life is still incompletely known given the heterogeneous nature of biogeographic data. However, to establish sustainable conservation areas, understanding species and communities distribution pa...

Species distribution modelling (SDM) has been increasingly applied to Southern Ocean case studies over the past decades, to map the distribution of species and highlight environmental settings driving species distribution. Predictive models have been commonly used for conservation purposes and supporting the delineation of marine protected areas, b...

Species distribution models (SDMs) are increasingly used in ecological and biogeographic studies by Antarctic biologists, including for conservation and management purposes. During the modelling process, model calibration is a critical step to ensure model reliability and robustness, especially in the case of SDMs, for which the number of selected...

Studying the influence of changing environmental conditions on Antarctic marine benthic invertebrates is strongly constrained by limited access to the region, which poses difficulties to performing long-term experimental studies. Ecological modelling has been increasingly used as a potential alternative to assess the impact of such changes on speci...

Southern Ocean ecosystems are under pressure from resource exploitation and climate change1,2. Mitigation requires the identification and protection of Areas of Ecological Significance (AESs), which have so far not been determined at the ocean-basin scale. Here, using assemblage-level tracking of marine predators, we identify AESs for this globally...

The Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) is a Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research project led jointly by the Expert Groups on Birds and Marine Mammals and Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics, and endorsed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. RAATD consolidated tracking data for mul...

The Retrospective Analysis of Antarctic Tracking Data (RAATD) is a Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research project led jointly by the Expert Groups on Birds and Marine Mammals and Antarctic Biodiversity Informatics, and endorsed by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. RAATD consolidated tracking data for mul...

The Southern Ocean (SO) is among the regions on Earth that are undergoing regionally the fastest environmental changes. The unique ecological features of its marine life make it particularly vulnerable to the multiple effects of climate change. A network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) has started to be implemented in the SO to protect marine ecos...

Abstract Life traits such as reproductive strategy can be determining factors of species evolutionary history and explain the resulting diversity patterns. This can be investigated using phylogeographic analyses of genetic units. In this work, the genetic structure of five asteroid genera with contrasting reproductive strategies (brooding: Diplaste...

In the Kerguelen Islands, the multiple effects of climate change are expected to impact coastal marine habitats. Species distribution models (SDM) can represent a convenient tool to predict the biogeographic response of species to climate change but biotic interactions are not considered in these models. Nevertheless, new species interactions can e...

In recent years, sea ice cover along coasts of East Antarctica has tended to increase. To understand ecological implications of these environmental changes, we studied benthic food web structure on the coasts of Adélie Land during an event of unusually high sea ice cover (i.e. two successive austral summers without seasonal breakup). We used integr...

Report of the diving activities carried out during the Scientific Expedition Belgica 121 (www.belgica120.be) in the Gerlach Strait, Antarctic Peninsula , February-March 2019. The report has been written by the Dive Leader with review by the other dive team members, and signed by the Dive Leader, Scientific Leader and Skipper of the RV Australis.

This is the cruise report of the Belgica 121 expedition to the Gerlache Strait

Species distribution models (SDMs) have been increasingly used over the past decades to characterise the spatial distribution and the ecological niche of various taxa. Validating predicted species distribution is important, especially when producing broad-scale models (i.e. at continental or oceanic scale) based on limited and spatially aggregated...

This dataset is a collection of marine environmental data layers suitable for use in Southern Ocean species distribution modelling. All environmental layers have been generated at a spatial resolution of 0.1 degrees, covering the Southern Ocean extent (80 degrees S - 45 degrees S, -180 - 180 degrees). The layers include information relating to bath...

Aim Species distribution modelling (SDM) represents a valuable alternative to predict species distribution over vast and remote areas of the ocean. We tested whether reliable SDMs can be generated for benthic marine organisms at the scale of the Southern Ocean. We aimed at identifying the main large‐scale factors that determine the distribution of...

The South Orkney Islands Southern Shelf (SOISS) Marine Protected Area (MPA) was the first MPA to be designated entirely within the high seas and is managed under the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). To assist with research and monitoring of the MPA, an international expedition ('SO-AntEco') was undertak...

Macroalgae are important in marine benthic communities both for food resources and for their role as key habitats for several species. Modelling their dynamic and potental growth in these communities is a key point to understand the dynamics of the entire ecosystem functioning. We developed a model that simulates macroalgae biomass variation accord...

Marine life of the Southern Ocean has been facing environmental changes and the direct impact of human activities during the past decades. Benthic communities have particularly been affected by such changes although we only slowly understand the effect of environmental changes on species physiology, biogeography, and distribu- tion. Species distrib...

The present dataset is a compilation of georeferenced occurrences of asteroids (Echinodermata: Aster-oidea) in the Southern Ocean. Occurrence data south of 45°S latitude were mined from various sources together with information regarding the taxonomy, the sampling source and sampling sites when available. Records from 1872 to 2016 were thoroughly c...

Brief presentation of the B120 expedition during a Belgica event at RBINS

A presentation about the importance of data sharing, geared for the latinamerican community. HIghlighting of SCAR products

This database includes over 7,100 georeferenced occurrence records of sea urchins (Echinodermata: Echinoidea) obtained from samples collected in the Southern Ocean (+180°W/+180°E; -35°/-78°S) during oceanographic cruises led over 150 years, from 1872 to 2015. Echinoids are common organisms of Southern Ocean benthic communities. A total of 201 speci...

Antarctic marine organisms are adapted to an extreme environment, characterized by a very low but stable temperature and a strong seasonality in food availability arousing from variations in day length. Ocean organisms are particularly vulnerable to global climate change with some regions being impacted by temperature increase and changes in primar...

Statistical models summaries and residual plots. (PDF)

General description of standard DEB model assumptions and notation. (PDF)

Map with the localities mentioned. (PDF)

Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration alters the chemistry of the oceans towards more acidic conditions. Polar oceans are particularly affected due to their low temperature, low carbonate content and mixing patterns, for instance upwellings. Tolerance to ocean acidification (OA) in metazoans is first linked to acid–base regulation cap...

Antarctica currently undergoes strong and contrasted impacts linked to climate change. While the West Antarctic Peninsula is one of the most rapidly warming regions in the world, resulting in sea ice cover decrease, the sea ice cover of East Antarctica unexpectedly tends to increase. Here, we studied shallow (0-20 m) benthic food web structure on t...

The South Orkney Islands are a small archipelago located in the Southern Ocean, 375 miles north-east of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. In 2009, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) established the South Orkney Islands Southern Shelf Marine Protected Area (SOISS MPA), the first MPA located entirely...

Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration alters the chemistry of the oceans towards more acidic conditions. Polar oceans are particularly affected due to their low temperature, low carbonate content and mixing patterns, for instance upwellings. Echinodermata were hypothesized to be at risk due to their high-magnesium calcite skeleton. H...