Kay Van Damme

Ghent University | UGhent

The Socotra Archipelago (Yemen) is globally recognized for its outstanding biodiversi-ty and endemism, designated on this basis a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008. The island underwent long geological and political isolation, ensuring preservation of unique ecosystems un-til the start of the new millennium. Now, Socotra Island is undergoing rapid...

The timely characterization of high-altitude freshwater habitats allows an assessment of the diversity of its biota and provides the basis for monitoring community change. In this study, we investigate the Cladocera fauna of 29 water bodies (pools, freshwater lakes, and surrounding swamps sampled at various occasions between 2005 and 2009) in the R...

Waterfleas (Crustacea: Branchiopoda: Cladocera) are among the most successful invertebrates in current freshwater ecosystems, occupying a wide range of niches worldwide. Cladocerans are an important component of the zooplankton, occur in high abundance, and show a marked degree of morphological diversification and species richness with over 700 ext...

Although phylogeny estimation is notoriously difficult in radiations that occurred several hundred million years ago, phylogenomic approaches offer new ways to examine relationships among ancient lineages and evaluate hypotheses that are key to evolutionary biology. Here we reconstruct the deep-rooted relationships of one of the oldest living arthr...

We examine the distribution of Dracaena cinnabari, the Socotran Dragon’s Blood Tree, an endangered species endemic to the island of Socotra (Yemen)—and we propose an accessibility approach to its conservation, taking the proximity of local communities and land users into account. Using the present occurrence of D. cinnabari, we applied a machine le...

The Socotra Archipelago is a true treasure of Yemen, located in the western Indian Ocean near the Horn of Africa. This ancient and until recently relatively isolated part of the Arabian Peninsula is known for its exceptional biodiversity on land and in the sea. Socotra’s iconic Dragon’s Blood Trees are known worldwide and symbolize a close bond bet...

The endemic Boswellia species (Burseraceae) on Socotra Island (Yemen) are of great local significance due to their various local ethnobotanical uses. However, despite the fact that these trees are endangered, little is known about their biology. We tested seed germination rates in controlled experiments (trials of 21 days) for two subsequent years...

Despite their important role in supporting important ecosystem functions in tropical wetlands, explorative and taxonomical studies on tropical zooplankton are still limited, hampering accurate comparisons between biogeographical regions and different wetland types. With this review we integrated current knowledge on patterns of species richness and...

Coastal areas are important habitats for many species and strongly affected by anthropogenic activities. Management for sustainable coastal ecosystems benefits from a comprehensive assessment of species diversity. Here, we measured the spatio-temporal changes in community and phylogenetic structure of spring and autumn nektonic communities in Daya...

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12210-021-01006-z

Few of the about 190 species currently described in the plant genus Dracaena [...]

A new species of the thermosbaenacean genus Tethysbaena Wagner, 1994 (Crustacea: Peracarida: Thermosbaenacea) is described based on females from a freshwater cave lake and a brackish coastal well on Socotra Island (Yemen) as Tethysbaena dioscorida n. sp. It is the first representative of the Thermosbaenacea that is described from the Socotra Archip...

The South China Sea (SCS) is part of the Indo-West Pacific Ocean, which is regarded as harboring a high diversity of fish. However, our knowledge of true fish diversity especially among pelagic and deep-sea families is still insufficient. Here, we used DNA barcoding and DNA identification to investigate the fish diversity and distribution in the th...

The topical collection ‘Twenty years of biodiversity research and nature conservation in the Socotra Archipelago’, in short ‘Socotra biodiversity research and nature conservation’ was conceived at the 18th Friends of Socotra annual meeting and Socotra conference which took place at the Orto Botanico di Palermo, Palermo, Italy, 26–29 September, 2019...

Dragonflies are important bioindicators of aquatic ecosystem health. We discuss the distribution and richness of the 22 dragon- and damselfly species known from the Socotra Archipelago UNESCO World Heritage Site (Yemen) in the western Indian Ocean. We compiled 841 records from literature, field data and museum collections, covering a surveying peri...

Socotra, the largest of four islands in the Socotra archipelago (Yemen), is characterized by high geo-morphological and biological diversity. Traditional management of land resources has been impacted by cultural shifts, globalization and urban expansion. In addition, the island has been affected by climate impacts, such as droughts and recent cycl...

Socotra Island, in the western Indian Ocean, harbors high biodiversity and endemism and makes up the largest part of the Socotra archipelago UNESCO World Heritage site. Its climatic, pedological, and geomorphological characteristics, together with the long geological isolation and inaccessibility, led to the flourishing of unique tree diversity, wi...

We report on the first finding of a widespread exotic pest species, the red palm weevil Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Olivier) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) on date palms Phoenix dactylifera L. (Arecaceae) on Socotra Island, Yemen. Our initial surveys reveal that the pest species is present in date palm plantations on the north-eastern coast of the isla...

Large squids of the genus Sthenoteuthis are commercially relevant species that include two truly oceanic squids. They are large nektonic predators being widely distributed throughout tropical and subtropical waters of the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific Ocean. The present study investigates different morphs varying in size at maturity, and assesses the g...

The Socotra Archipelago contains islands of high conservation importance. Since 2003, the Socotra Archipelago is a UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve and since 2008 it was officially listed as a UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site. In addition, the Socotra Archipelago contains currently the only Ramsar Site of Yemen (Detwah Lagoon), and it has been de...

We describe a new species of Stenasellus Dollfus, 1897 (Isopoda: Asellota: Stenasellidae) from stagnant freshwater habitats in a cave on Socotra Island, Yemen. S. taitii n. sp. is the first endemic stenasellid found in Socotra, showing relatively closer morphological affinities to species from the Middle East (Oman, Iran) than from the African main...

The ctenopod Diaphanosoma fluviatile has been reported primarily from the Neotropical region and occasionally from the southern United States. D. fluviatile was collected in the Great Lakes basin (the Maumee River, Western Lake Erie, and Lake Michigan) in 2015 and 2018, far north from its previously known distribution. The occurrence of this southe...

A long hidden chydorid (Chydoridae, Cladocera) taxon, first found as fossil specimens and recently redefined as Rhynchotalona latens (Sarmaja-Korjonen et al., Hydrobiologia 436: 165–169, 2000) is investigated for its biogeography and ecology. Late Holocene sediment sequence from Lake Sylvilampi, NE Finnish Lapland, and R. latens spatial distributio...

Members of the genus Notoalona Rajapaksa & Fernando, 1987 (Cladocera: Chydoridae: Aloninae) are small-sized chydorids, inhabiting tropical water bodies around the World. Based on morphological features two species, N. globulosa (Daday, 1898) and N. pseudomacronyx Van Damme, Maiphae & Sa-Ardrit, 2013, were revealed in tropical Asia, but the status o...

Nearctic bosminids have been studied for their ability to adapt to changes in temperature, algal species composition, and invertebrate and fish predation. Bosminids utilize cyclomorphosis much like Daphnia in response to these changes. While these adaptations have helped bosminids adapt to environmental changes, phenotypic plasticity has made accur...

The morphology of one of the smallest chydorid cladocerans in the world, Unapertura latens Sarmaja-Korjonen, Hakojärvi & Korhola, 2000 (Branchiopoda: Cladocera: Anomopoda) is studied herein. External features and postabdomen of the adult parthenogenetic female are discussed in detail for the first time, based on an intact specimen from northern Fin...

This article describes the finding of Diaphanosoma fluviatile in the Laurentian Great lakes basin.

The marine environments surrounding the Dongsha Islands have long been considered as important fishing grounds for fishermen from China and surrounding countries. Although considerable work has been done on marine fish taxonomy of the Dongsha Islands, there is still a significant gap between our knowledge and the true fish diversity in this ocean a...

An annotated checklist of recorded species of Cladocera (Crustacea: Bran-chiopoda) from inland aquatic habitats in Ecuador (including the Galápagos) is provided. We revised all published records, evaluated the validity of each taxon and provided short taxonomic and biogeographical remarks for each taxon. A total of 34 valid species grouped into 23...

Data on the prehistoric biota of the Socotra Archipelago (Yemen) are scarce. We report on the first extinct vertebrate ever recorded from this western Indian Ocean island group. An exceptionally preserved adult specimen of Egyptian fruit bat Rousettus aegyptiacus was found in a calcite flowstone in Hoq Cave on the NE coast of Socotra Island. Accele...

An annotated checklist of recorded species of Cladocera (Crustacea: Branchiopoda) from inland aquatic habitats in Ecuador (including the Galápagos) is provided. We revised all published records, evaluated the validity of each taxon and provided short taxonomic and biogeographical remarks for each taxon. A total of 34 valid species grouped into 23 g...

The first record of Triops Schrank, 1803 (Crustacea: Branchiopoda: Notostraca: Triopsidae) from Socotra Island is presented herein. Besides Madagascar and the current note, the genus is unknown from Indian Ocean islands. A brief morphological exploration indicates that the Socotran Triops cf. granarius (Lucas, 1864) (trachyaspis form) belongs to an...

We describe a new species of stygobiont atyid shrimp of the genus Halocaridinides Fujino & Shokita, 1975 from subterranean brackish and freshwater environments on Socotra Island (Yemen). This is the first atyid shrimp discovered in the Socotra Archipelago. This Socotran endemic is the second species of Halocaridinides recorded from an Indian Ocean...

Future manned space exploration will send humans farther away from Earth than ever before (e.g., to Mars), leading to extended mission durations and thus to a higher demand for essentials such as food, water and oxygen. As resupplying these items from Earth is nearly impossible, aquatic bioregenerative life support systems (BLSS) appear to be a pro...

The 16th Conference and Annual General Meeting of the Friends of Soqotra (FoS) was hosted by the Natural History Museum in Bern, Switzerland, with Dr Eike Neubert as the main organizer, on 27-29 October 2017. Around 25 people attended (Fig. 2), including guests from Yemen (Soqotra and the mainland), Bahrain, UK, Czech Republic, Italy, South Africa,...

A complete list of bat records available from the Socotra Archipelago was compiled from the literature and from new records, based on field studies and examination of museum specimens. The record reviews of the particular species are complemented with distribution maps, summaries of distributional status, notes on field data and on taxonomic status...

A new cyclopine copepod, Thalamocyclops pachypes sp. nov. was found to roam the crevicular residence of the semi-terrestrial brachyuran crab Socotra pseudocardisoma living on the Diksam limestone plateau of Socotra Island (Yemen). The remarkable morphology of the antennules, maxilliped and the inflated legs 4 and 5 justified the erection of a separ...

GRIIS Checklist of Introduced and Invasive Species-Yemen-Soqotra https://www.gbif.org/dataset/29d2d5a6-db22-4abd-b784-9ab2f9757c3c ST The Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species (GRIIS) presents validated and verified checklists (inventories) of introduced (alien) and invasive alien species at the country level. Phase 1 of the project h...

Omics studies aim at exploring the molecular and genetic profiles of organisms to unravel the evolution, the structure, the complex interactions, and functions of its components using a holistic approach. Rather than focusing on a single gene, the field of genomics allows researchers to plunge into a vast matrix of genetic interactions and gene fun...

We studied cladoceran species richness, community composition, habitat preference and density in three spatial habitats over 1 year at Thale-Noi, a large shallow tropical lake in southern Thailand. Monthly sampling conducted with activity traps deployed overnight in littoral (Hydrilla and Ceratophyllum beds), open water (Hydrilla beds) and marginal...

This original form of this rebuttal was submitted to Science on 3 March 2017 (limited to 300 words as per Science editorial policy) but rejected on 13 March 2017. Herein, we elaborate on our original Science submission in order to more fully address the issue without the length limitations. This rebuttal is followed by the list of the signatories w...

We present the first detailed cytological study of male meiosis in Daphnia (Crustacea: Branchiopoda: Cladocera)—an aquatic microcrustacean with a cyclical parthenogenetic life cycle. Using immunostaining of the testes in Daphnia magna for baseline knowledge, we characterized the different stages of meiotic division and spermiogenesis in relation to...

Easter Island is known for a depauperate terrestrial and aquatic biota. The discovery of new taxa is unusual, even among the island’s micro-invertebrates. A new cladoceran, Ovalona pascua sp. nov. (Crustacea: Cladocera: Anomopoda: Chydoridae), is described from freshwater environments. The chydorid, the only known extant cladoceran on the island, i...

Continued fine-tuning of taxonomy in the Chydoridae Dybowksi & Grochowski, 1894 (Crustacea: Branchiopoda: Anomopoda) is important for the assessment of the diversity in this speciose family and our progress in chydorid biogeography and evolution. The continuation of the taxonomical study of single taxa, however tedious and seemingly unimportant, pr...

Many taxa formerly housed in the lump genus Alona Baird, 1843 remain data-deficient. These species are often overlooked or wrongly identified during faunistic and ecological studies. “Alona” hardingi (Brehm, 1957) is a lesser known taxon, hidden for decades under records of “Alona” monacantha Sars, 1901. Both taxa have recently been allocated to th...

The Socotra Archipelago (Yemen) in the Western Indian Ocean, is the only insular UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site in the Arab Region. Socotra is an ancient continental archipelago of Gondwanan origin with a diverse topography, composed of four main islands. It is known for its high biodiversity and endemism in the terrestrial realm and its high b...

Members of the chydorid genus Kurzia Dybowski & Grochowski, 1894 (Branchiopoda: Anomopoda) are typically known from the Holarctic and the Neotropics (Rajapaska & Fernando 1986; Hudec 2000; Elmoor-Loureiro 2002; Kotov, 2004). One representative of the sub genus Kurzia, Kurzia (Kurzia) latissima (Kurz 1875) has been reported from India, in the Orient...

More than half of the species in Namanereis Chamberlin, 1919 (Nereididae: Namanereidinae), are adapted to life in subterranean waters. We document the taxonomy, distribution, and adaptations of the groundwater-inhabiting species in this genus for the first time, starting from the description of two new stygobitic species. The first, Namanereis pilb...

More than half of the species in Namanereis Chamberlin, 1919 (Nereididae: Namanereidinae), are adapted to life in subterranean waters. We document the taxonomy, distribution, and adaptations of the groundwater-inhabiting species in this genus for the first time, starting from the description of two new stygobitic species. The first, Namanereis pilb...

Daphnia magna is a model organism for several areas of biology, from ecotoxicology to genomics. Like other cladocerans, Daphnia is a cyclical parthenogen: females are able to produce clonal offspring (both male and female) without the need for fertilization. It follows that the two sexes share an identical genome. The differences between the male a...

Tropical Amphi-Pacific and trans-Pacific disjunctions are among the most controversial distribution patterns in biogeography. A disjunct distribution pattern between SE Asia (in fact, Indochina-Assam) and the Neotropics is rarely investigated in freshwater invertebrates. In the following, we give the first review on potential tropical Amphi-Pacific...

Freshwater surveys in the tropics have high potential for revealing new taxa if a wide range of habitats is included. Tropical inland swamps are ignored during most zooplankton sampling campaigns. We show that swamps harbour underestimated Cladocera diversities in South East (SE) Asia, illustrated here for Southern (S) Thailand. According to our pr...

We review the current state of knowledge and patterns of distribution in the endemic Cladocera (Crustacea: Branchiopoda) of Southern Africa and describe two species of the Western Cape, of which one is new to science. Frey (1993), Korovchinsky (2006) and Smirnov (2008) previously suggested that South Africa harbours few endemics in the Cladocera. I...

The aim of this work is to study the embryonic development of a common tropical cladoceran Dunhevedia crassa King, 1853 (Anomopoda: Chydoridae) and compare the durations of embryonic instars and growth during embryogenesis in small-sized chydorids and other cladocerans. The sequence of events in the embryogenesis of Dunhevedia females was studied b...

We present the first faunistic report on the Laotian Cladocera from diverse habitats in Vientiane province, Central Laos. We counted a total of 70 species, belonging to 37 genera, which is realistically close to an estimated 77 species. The five most common species were Diaphanosoma excisum, Ephemeroporus cf. barroisi, Anthalona harti, Macrothrix s...

Recent advances in genomic approaches and their increasing application to a wide range of taxa are contributing to the rapid development of the field of physiological genomics. Understanding the relationship between organisms and their environment is central to this field that focuses on genomic exploration of the physiological mechanisms that unde...

Differences between sexes are an evolutionary puzzle. Sexual dimorphism can allow a species to exploit multiple niches and balance different ecological needs of egg and sperm producers. Such diversification is often observed in nature. However, both sexes share an almost identical set of genes. Individual genes are thus pulled between the needs of...

Based on a revision of available literature on the Indian Cladocera (Crustacea: Branchiopoda), we present an updated checklist, with taxonomical updates and comments for all taxa recorded since the start of research of this group in the country since 1860. We have listed a total of 137 valid taxa, of which most records belong to species groups that...

Until now, a single endemic cladoceran genus was known from the Oriental region. We propose the region’s second endemic lineage of generic rank, Salinalona gen. nov., to accomodate the South East Asian Alona sarasinorum Stingelin, 1900 and the Indian A. taraporevalae Shirgur and Naik, 1977. Morphological revision shows that the external similaritie...

Southeast (SE) Asia, which covers about 4% of the earth’s land area, harbours nearly one fourth of the planet’s plant and animal species. Southeast Asia is understood as a region with high biodiversity and endemism in freshwater invertebrates, comprising ancient lakes that are considered model systems for evolution (von Rintelen et al., 2010, 2012)...

‘Galápagos of the Indian Ocean’ The Socotra Archipelago World Heritage site (Yemen) is situated in the Western Indian Ocean, a 250 km long archipelago about 100 km east of the Horn of Africa and 380 km south of the Arabian Peninsula. From west to east, the archipelago is made up of the islands Abd al Kuri (133 km2), ‘The Brothers’ Samha (41 km2) an...

The richness region for cladocerans in phytotelmata is México. Very few places has been record has phytotelmata habitat for Cladocera, 4 species have been found in mexican bromeliads.