Lore Geeraert

KU Leuven | ku leuven · Department of Biology

The diverse biotopes in the current domain of Park Abbey exist for centuries. Yet little is known about their biodiversity. In this report we present the results from a yearlong survey on carabids, ants and hoverflies with pitfall and Malaise traps. Additionally, we sampled land and freshwater gastropods, carrion and water beetles, moths and vegeta...

Agricultural expansion and intensification threaten pollinator populations worldwide, potentially jeopardizing crop pollination. Although the highest rates of cropland expansion are currently found within the tropics, quantifying effects of landscape composition on tropical pollinator communities and the provided pollination services to crops has r...

Intensively managed shade coffee plantations are expanding in SW Ethiopia, at the cost of the more natural coffee agroforestry systems. Here, we investigated consequences for the potential pollinator community of Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica L.) in its natural range. We surveyed coffee flower visitors at six different sites in the Jimma region in...

We here report for the first time on the presence of three species of the conopid genus Stylogaster Macquart (Diptera, Conopidae) in Ethiopia, viz. S. nitens Brunetti, S. westwoodi Smith and Stylogaster sp.. We further screened 908 muscid flies (Diptera, Muscidae) for the presence of impaled eggs of Stylogaster and recorded eggs on 89 individuals (...

Tropical deforestation and effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services are relatively well studied, but the extent and impact of forest degradation remains much more cryptic. Most of the remaining Ethiopian moist Afromontane forests are currently being degraded due to forest management for coffee production. So far, effects of degradation on bio...

This poster was presented during the 4th World Congress on Agroforestry, and is a visual presentation of our work published in Journal of Environmental Management (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.10.037).

In tropical regions the extent of agricultural land is increasing rapidly at the expense of natural forest, with associated losses of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Agroforestry has long been proposed as a more sustainable agricultural system, conserving biodiversity while providing significant local livelihoods. In this context, camera traps...

'Afromontane' ecosystems in Eastern Africa are biologically highly valuable, but many remain poorly studied. We list dragonfly observations of a Biodiversity Express Survey to the highland areas in northwest Mozambique, exploring for the first time the Njesi Plateau (Serra Jecci/Lichinga plateau), Mt Chitagal and Mt Sanga, north of the provincial c...

Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica L.) grows naturally as an understory shrub in the moist evergreen montane forests of Southwest Ethiopia. In response to an increasing local human population pressure and a growing coffee demand on the world market, coffee producing forests are increasingly managed to boost coffee yield. Here we compared organoleptic c...

The mountains of northern Mozambique - archipelagos of scattered inselbergs topped with evergreen forests - remain poorly known biologically. Their long geological isolation from the east African riſt combined with the conflict-fractured history of Mozambique meant that while they represent an area of clear biological interest they have been subjec...

Climate change and emerging pests and diseases are posing important challenges to global crop productivity, including that of Arabica coffee. The genetic basis of commercially used Arabica coffee cultivars is extremely narrow, and it is uncertain how much genetic diversity is present in ex situ collections. Conserving the wild Arabica coffee gene p...

Knowledge of the Ethiopian amphibian fauna is limited and Southwest Ethiopia remains understudied. This part of Ethiopia, where most of the country’s remaining natural forest is situated, is known to harbour the only populations of Afrixalus clarkei (Largen), an endemic banana frog, worldwide. This species is under great threat of extinction and is...

With less than three percent of natural forest remaining in Ethiopia, the need to protect the remaining forest is rapidly increasing. Overexploitation and coffee production are two of the main threats to forest loss. The Gera forest in Southwest Ethiopia lies within the Eastern Afromontane biodiversity hotspot and is one of the larger remaining tra...

We mention the rediscovery of the very rare carabid beetle Pogonus luridipennis (Germar, 1822) in the IJzer Estuary in Nieuwpoort in the spring of 2007. Samenvatting We vermelden de herontdekking van de zeer zeldzame loopkeversoort Pogonus luridipennis (Germar, 1822) in het IJzer estuarium te Nieuwpoort in de lente van 2007. Résumé Nous mentionnons...