Frederik Van de PerreUniversity of Antwerp | UA
Frederik Van de Perre
PhD Biology
About
28
Publications
28,653
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280
Citations
Introduction
In 2021, research scientist for Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund at the Nkuba Conservation Area in DR Congo.
During my PhD I studied the relationship between carbon storage and biodiversity in the rainforests of the central Congo basin. How does the diversity of plants and animals influence the carbon storage? What is the effect of climate change mitigation programs (like UN-REDD+) on biodiversity?
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
December 2020 - present
Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International
Position
- Researcher
July 2020 - November 2020
Position
- Business Development Manager
Education
December 2012 - March 2020
September 2010 - September 2012
September 2007 - June 2010
Publications
Publications (28)
The forests of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) constitute a biodiversity hotspot and provide habitat to two globally threatened great apes, the Grauer's gorilla Gorilla beringei graueri and eastern chimpanzee Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii.
Community‐based conservation activities may provide protection to these primates and their env...
The grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus), once abundant, has become increasingly threatened due to the combined effects of capture for the global pet trade and habitat loss. Although grey parrots are well studied in captivity, effective conservation efforts require a better understanding of their ecological requirements in the wild. The aim of this pa...
Interspecific competition, environmental filtering, or spatial variation in productivity can contribute to positive or negative spatial covariance in the abundances of species across ensembles (i.e., groups of interacting species defined by geography, resource use, and taxonomy). In contrast, density compensation should give rise to a negative rela...
Sub-Saharan Africa is under-represented in global biodiversity datasets, particularly regarding the impact of land use on species’ population abundances. Drawing on recent advances in expert elicitation to ensure data consistency, 200 experts were convened using a modified-Delphi process to estimate ‘intactness scores’: the remaining proportion of...
Many tropical biosphere reserves face the problem of overexploiting biological resources, which is a major cause of biodiversity loss. We used an integrative approach, combining camera trapping and bat trapping in diverse habitats over multiple surveys in Yangambi Biosphere Reserve, Democratic Republic of the Congo. We investigated whether species-...
As viral genomic imprints in host genomes, endogenous viral elements (EVEs) shed light on the deep evolutionary history of viruses, ancestral host ranges, and ancient viral-host interactions. In addition, they may provide crucial information for calibrating viral evolutionary timescales. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive in silico screeni...
It seems intuitively obvious that species diversity promotes functional diversity: communities with more plant species imply more varied plant leaf chemistry, more species of crops provide more kinds of food, etc. Recent literature has nuanced this view, showing how the relationship between the two can be modulated along latitudinal or environmenta...
As viral genomic imprints in host genomes, endogenous viral elements (EVEs) shed light on the deep evolutionary history of viruses, ancestral host ranges, and ancient viral-host interactions. In addition, they may provide crucial information for calibrating viral evolutionary timescales. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive in silico screeni...
Background: The speckled-pelage brush-furred rats (Lophuromys flavopunctatus group) have been difficult to define given conflicting genetic, morphological, and distributional records that combine to obscure meaningful accounts of its taxonomic diversity and evolution. In this study, we inferred the systematics, phylogeography, and evolutionary hist...
Hepatitis C virus (HCV; genus Hepacivirus) represents a major public health problem, infecting about 3% of the human population. Because no animal reservoir carrying closely related hepaciviruses has been identified, the zoonotic origins of HCV still remain unresolved. Motivated by recent findings of divergent hepaciviruses in rodents and a plausib...
We determined near complete and complete monkeypox virus genomes in a shrew ( Crocidura littoralis ), two squirrels ( Funisciurus anerythrus, Funisciurus bayonii ), and produced shorter sequences from two rats ( Stochomys longicaudatus, Cricetomys sp. 2) originating from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This suggests that a number of rodents b...
We determined a near complete and complete monkeypox virus (Mpox) genome in an elephant shrew ( Petrodromus tetradactylus ), a squirrel ( Funisciurus bayonii ), and produced shorter sequencesobtained from two rats ( Stochomys longicaudatus, Cricetomys sp. 2 ) originating from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We also ran a series of molecular c...
Hepatitis C virus (HCV; genus Hepacivirus) represents a major public health problem, infecting about 3 % of the human population (± 185,000,000 people). Because no plausible animal reservoir carrying closely related hepaciviruses has been identified, the zoonotic origins of HCV still remain elusive. Motivated by recent findings of divergent hep-aci...
It seems intuitive that species diversity promotes functional diversity. For example, more plant species imply more diverse leaf chemistry and thus more kinds of food for herbivores. Here we argue that the evolution of functional trait variance challenges this view. We show that trait-based eco-evolutionary processes force species to evolve narrowe...
Understanding the determinants of species coexistence in complex and species-rich communities is a fundamental goal of ecology. Patterns of species coexistence depend on how biotic interactions and environmental filtering act over ecological and evolutionary time scales. Climatic fluctuations in lowland rainforests of the Congo Basin led to the num...
The Congo Basin rainforest is the second largest rainforest in the world and one of the most biodiverse regions on Earth. Nevertheless, the Congo Basin biodiversity remains to be fully mapped, with many species awaiting discovery or official description. In recent years, much effort has been put into research on shrews (Soricidae), particularly in...
Since its launch in 2007 the African Rodentia database has become an important reference with on average 100 unique visitors per month, about 50,000 page views per year and more than 150 registered users. Because of its proven usefulness for the diffusion of data on African rodents the taxonomical range of the database was expanded in 2019 to inclu...
One of the most widely recognized patterns in ecology is the increase in species richness from poles to tropics. Literature suggests that the Congolian lowland rainforest does not follow this pattern: the Central Congolian forest (CCLF), south of the Congo River, is thought to harbor fewer vertebrate species and endemics than the Northeastern (NELF...
Protecting aboveground carbon stocks in tropical forests is essential for mitigating global climate change and is
assumed to simultaneously conserve biodiversity. Although the relationship between tree diversity and carbon
stocks is generally positive, the relationship remains unclear for consumers or decomposers. We assessed this
relationship for...
Protecting aboveground carbon stocks in tropical forests is essential for mitigating global climate change and is assumed to simultaneously conserve biodiversity. Although the relationship between tree diversity and carbon stocks is generally positive, the relationship remains unclear for consumers or decomposers. We assessed this relationship for...
Monodominant patches of forest dominated by Gilbertiodendron dewevrei are commonly found in central African tropical forests, alongside forests with high species diversity. Although these forests are generally found sparsely distributed along rivers, their occurrence is not thought to be (clearly) driven by edaphic conditions but rather by trait co...
Conference lecture: To mitigate global climate change, the UN-REDD+ strategy proposes to protect and enhance biosphere carbon stocks through the conservation of tropical rainforest systems. The conservation of animal and plant biodiversity is usually assumed to be a potential ‘co-benefit’ of protecting forests and the carbon stocks they correspond...
Anthropogenic climate change represents a major threat to biodiversity as well as to human well-being. Humanity’s response is to (attempt to) develop and implement mitigation strategies that minimise the speed and eventual level of climate change. Prominent among these is the United Nations scheme known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and...
Although more than 40% of Tanzania mainland is managed for nature conservation, protected areas are increasingly becoming isolated because of rapid habitat degradation in the matrix in between. Knowledge on corridors connecting the protected areas is urgently needed. We assessed the area between Saadani National Park and Wami-Mbiki Wildlife Managem...
Questions
Questions (3)
I would like to calculate the functional diversity measures proposed by Chiu & Chao (2014). The paper gives formulas for the calculation of functional hill numbers, mean functional diversity and (total) functional diversity. But it doesn't mention any R script or package and I don't feel confident encoding these formulas myself.
I was wondering if anyone already calculated these measures and how they did it.
Ref:
Chiu, C. H., & Chao, A. (2014). Distance-based functional diversity measures and their decomposition: A framework based on hill numbers. PLoS ONE, 9(7). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0100014
If you want to compare diversity e.g. Hill numbers across species assemblages you need to standardize for sample size or sample completeness. Does the same count for asymptotic species richness estimators (such as Chao indices or ICE and ACE)? You calculate the same, namely 'true' species richness (often based on the number of singletons), so I guess it already corrects for differences in sampling effort?
Second (related) question:
Can anyone explain why I find different values for the same estimators calculated with different programs? Using the same abundance dataset I calculated ACE and Chao1 in EstimateS, R (fossil) and SPADE...and I got three different values for each estimator.
I know that EstimateS uses resampling and that it cannot calculate ACE, but strangely the Chao1 values are lower than the estimated species richness when doubling the reference sample.
I sampled several plots in an area and would like to spatially extrapolate the species richness. I planned to use these presence data to make species distribution models which can then be stacked to provide a measure of species richness per pixel.
However, the rarefaction curve of the total number of individuals sampled does not reach an asymptote, indicating that not all species were detected. This means that the S SDM will always underestimate the 'true' number of species. Is there a way to correct for this?
As each SDM gives a measure for habitat suitability per pixel, I guess I cannot use it as an input for rarefaction.
