Thomas Van Dijck

Hasselt University · Centre for Environmental Sciences (CMK)

Urbanization has been identified as a significant anthropogenic factor in the decline of macroinvertebrate populations in terms of abundance, biomass, and species richness over the past few decades. Green roofs are commonly promoted as means of mitigating the negative impacts of urbanization. In this study we investigated twenty green roofs in the...

Insect populations are declining due to a multitude of causes. One major cause is the loss of suitable habitat. Recently, green roofs have been investigated for their potential to mitigate this loss of habitat in urbanized environments. In Belgium, most installed green roofs are characterized by a thin layer of mineral substrate and a vegetational...

Extensive green roofs are said to increase local arthropod diversity in urban environments. Most roofs are dominated by either generalists or xerothermic species, as a result of their isolated locations and shallow substrate layers. We investigated whether biodiverse extensive green roofs ( Sedum spp., forbs and grasses) attract more arthropod spec...

From 2019 until 2021, we investigated extensive green roofs in Flanders (Belgium) for their arthropod communities. On two different roofs we found, amongst the collected specimens, a species new for the Belgian ant fauna: Hypoponera eduardi (Forel, 1894). The presence of multiple worker ants belonging to this species indicates that it has formed a...