Inventory of alien macroinvertebrates in Flanders, Belgium

Data Records

The data in this checklist resource has been published as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A), which is a standardized format for sharing biodiversity data as a set of one or more data tables. The core data table contains 73 records.

3 extension data tables also exist. An extension record supplies extra information about a core record. The number of records in each extension data table is illustrated below.

This IPT archives the data and thus serves as the data repository. The data and resource metadata are available for download in the downloads section. The versions table lists other versions of the resource that have been made publicly available and allows tracking changes made to the resource over time.

Versions

The table below shows only published versions of the resource that are publicly accessible.

How to cite

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

Boets P, Lock K, Mertens J, Goethals P, Adriaens T, Groom Q, Brosens D, Desmet P, Reyserhove L (2018): Inventory of alien macroinvertebrates in Flanders, Belgium. v1.5. Ghent University. Dataset/Checklist. https://doi.org/10.15468/yxcq07

Rights

Researchers should respect the following rights statement:

The publisher and rights holder of this work is Ghent University. To the extent possible under law, the publisher has waived all rights to these data and has dedicated them to the Public Domain (CC0 1.0). Users may copy, modify, distribute and use the work, including for commercial purposes, without restriction.

GBIF Registration

This resource has been registered with GBIF, and assigned the following GBIF UUID: 289244ee-e1c1-49aa-b2d7-d379391ce265.  Ghent University publishes this resource, and is itself registered in GBIF as a data publisher endorsed by Belgian Biodiversity Platform.

Keywords

Checklist; Inventorythematic; checklist; inventory; alien species; macroinvertebrates; Crustacea; Mollusca; Flanders; Belgium; TrIAS

Contacts

Geographic Coverage

This checklist covers alien macroinvertebrate species found in different aquatic habitats in Flanders (northern Belgium), including all types of waterways, lakes, and coastal habitats. The proximity to the sea, the interconnection of different waterways, the high degree of canalisation, and the presence of several harbours make Flemish watercourses susceptible to aquatic invasions (Boets et al. 2016).

Taxonomic Coverage

In total, 73 alien macroinvertebrate species have been collected in Flanders of which 52 are regularly encountered in fresh and/or slightly brackish waters. The remaining 21 species are restricted to the marine environment for at least a considerable share of their lifetime. Most alien macroinvertebrate species are crustaceans (51%), followed by Mollusca (27%), Annelida (19%) and Platyhelminthes (3%). Most alien macroinvertebrates originate from North America (37%) or the Ponto-Caspian region (21%). The main vector of introduction is probably passive transport via the hull of ships (biofouling) and ballast water (71%). The transport via canals is the second main vector (28%) and promoted the dispersion of alien macroinvertebrates. Also, some species were introduced through aquaculture (17%) and hobbyists (6%) (Boets et al. 2016).

Temporal Coverage

Project Data

Imagine a future where dynamically, from year to year, we can track the progression of alien species (AS), identify emerging species, assess their current and future risk and timely inform policy in a seamless data-driven workflow. One that is built on open science and open data infrastructures. By using international biodiversity standards and facilities, we would ensure interoperability, repeatability and sustainability. This would make the process adaptable to future requirements in an evolving IAS policy landscape both locally and internationally. The project Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS) aims to do this for Belgium. For a full project description, see Vanderhoeven et al. (2017, https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.3.e13414).

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

See Boets et al. (2016).

Method step description:

1. The source data for this standardized checklist is an Excel spreadsheet, originally published as Table S1 in the supplementary material of Boets et al. (2016) (http://www.aquaticinvasions.net/2016/Supplements/AI_2016_Boets_etal_Supplement.xls).
2. This raw data file was reformatted to make it more machine-readable and uploaded to a GitHub repository (https://github.com/trias-project/alien-macroinvertebrates). See https://trias-project.github.io/alien-macroinvertebrates for an introduction to this repository and the mapping of this dataset.
3. The source references for each taxon were also standardized and uploaded.
4. We developed a RMarkdown script to document and perform the transformation of the data to Darwin Core, which includes the following steps:
5. Perform some basic data cleaning of the raw data.
6. Generate stable and unique identifiers for each taxon (taxonID).
7. Create a taxon core file (http://rs.gbif.org/core/dwc_taxon.xml).
8. Create a distribution extension file (http://rs.gbif.org/extension/gbif/1.0/distribution.xml), including standardization of the distribution date range.
9. Create a species profile extension file (http://rs.gbif.org/extension/gbif/1.0/speciesprofile.xml), with coarse habitat information.
10. Create a description extension file (http://rs.gbif.org/extension/gbif/1.0/description.xml), with standardized pathway of introduction (using the pathway vocabulary from the Convention on Biological Diversity (2014)), native range (using the WGSRPD vocabulary from Brummitt (2001) where applicable), and invasion stage (set as “established” based on Blackburn et al. (2011)).
11. The resulting Darwin Core data files are uploaded to the INBO IPT and documented with metadata.
12. The dataset is published and registered with GBIF.

Bibliographic Citations

1. Boets P, Brosens D, Lock K, Adriaens T, Aelterman B, Mertens J & Goethals PLM (2016) Alien macroinvertebrates in Flanders (Belgium). Aquatic Invasions 11: 131-144. https://doi.org/10.3391/ai.2016.11.2.03 http://www.aquaticinvasions.net/2016/AI_2016_Boets_etal.pdf
2. Blackburn TM, Pysek P, Bacher S, Carlton JT, Duncan RP, Jarosik V, Wilson JRU & Richardson DM (2011) A proposed unified framework for biological invasions. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 26: 333-339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2011.03.023
3. Brummitt RK (2001) World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (Ed. 2). Published for the International Working Group on Taxonomic Databases for Plant Sciences (TDWG) by the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. http://grassworld.myspecies.info/sites/grassworld.myspecies.info/files/tdwg_geo2.pdf
4. Convention on Biological Diversity (2014) Pathways of introduction of invasive species, their prioritization and management. UNEP/CBD/SBSTTA/18/9/Add.1. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Montreal. https://www.cbd.int/doc/meetings/sbstta/sbstta-18/official/sbstta-18-09-add1-en.pdf
5. Vanderhoeven S, Adriaens T, Desmet P, Strubbe D, Backeljau T, Barbier Y, Brosens D, Cigar J, Coupremanne M, De Troch R, Eggermont H, Heughebaert A, Hostens K, Huybrechts P, Jacquemart A, Lens L, Monty A, Paquet J, Prévot C, Robertson T, Termonia P, Van De Kerchove R, Van Hoey G, Van Schaeybroeck B, Vercayie D, Verleye T, Welby S, Groom Q (2017) Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS): Building a data-driven framework to inform policy. Research Ideas and Outcomes 3: e13414. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.3.e13414

Additional Metadata