Checklist

Inventory of alien macroinvertebrates in Flanders, Belgium

Latest version published by Ghent University on 3 October 2018 Ghent University
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Publication date:
3 October 2018
Published by:
Ghent University
License:
CC0 1.0

Download the latest version of this resource data as a Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) or the resource metadata as EML or RTF:

Data as a DwC-A file download 73 records in English (28 KB) - Update frequency: as needed
Metadata as an EML file download in English (24 KB)
Metadata as an RTF file download in English (20 KB)

Description

The Inventory of alien macroinvertebrates in Flanders, Belgium is a species checklist dataset published by Ghent University. It contains information on 73 alien macroinvertebrate species (mostly crustaceans and molluscs) occurring in Flemish aquatic habitats, from inland lakes to coastal harbours at the North Sea. The inventory is the result of the study Boets et al. (2016) (https://doi.org/10.3391/ai.2016.11.2.03 with occurrence data at https://doi.org/10.15468/xjtfoo) where it was originally published as supplementary material. Here it is published as a standardized Darwin Core Archive and includes for each species: the scientific name, higher classification, and stable taxon identifier (in the taxon core), the year of first introduction and last assessment in Flanders (given as a year range in the event date in the distribution extension), coarse habitat information (in the species profile extension) and the pathway(s) of introduction, native range(s), and invasion stage in Flanders (in the description extension). The dataset can be used for researching and managing aquatic invasions or compiling regional and national registries of alien species. Issues with the dataset can be reported at: https://github.com/trias-project/alien-macroinvertebrates

We have released this dataset to the public domain under a Creative Commons Zero waiver. We would appreciate it if you follow the GBIF citation guidelines (https://www.gbif.org/citation-guidelines) when using the data. If you have any questions regarding this dataset, don’t hesitate to contact us via the contact information provided in the metadata or via https://twitter.com/trias_project.

This dataset was published as open data for the TrIAS project (Tracking Invasive Alien Species http://trias-project.be, Vanderhoeven et al. 2017), with technical support provided by the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO). It is selected as one of the authoritative sources for the compilation of a unified and reproducible checklist of alien species in 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.

Taxon (core)
73
Description 
248
Distribution 
73
SpeciesProfile 
73

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

Pieter Boets
  • Metadata Provider
  • Originator
  • Point Of Contact
Researcher
Ghent University
BE
Koen Lock
  • Originator
Researcher
Ghent University
BE
Joost Mertens
  • Originator
Researcher
Vlaamse Milieumaatschappij (VMM)
BE
Peter Goethals
  • Originator
Researcher
Ghent University
BE
Tim Adriaens
  • Originator
Researcher
Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)
BE
Quentin Groom
Dimitri Brosens
  • Originator
Biodiversity Data Liaison Manager
Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) / Belgian Biodiversity Platform
BE
Peter Desmet
  • Metadata Provider
  • Originator
Open data coordinator
Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)
BE
Lien Reyserhove
  • Metadata Provider
  • Originator
Data publisher
Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO)
BE

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).

Bounding Coordinates South West [50.67, 2.53], North East [51.51, 5.94]

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).

Kingdom Animalia (animals)
Phylum Annelida, Arthropoda, Mollusca, Platyhelminthes

Temporal Coverage

Start Date / End Date 1600-01-01 / 2016-12-31

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).

Title Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS)
Identifier TrIAS
Funding TrIAS is funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) call for Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks (BRAIN).
Study Area Description Belgium.
Design Description The project builds on two components: 1) The establishment of a data mobilization framework for alien species data from diverse data sources and 2) the development of data-driven procedures for risk evaluation based on risk modelling, risk mapping and risk assessment. TrIAS uses facilities from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF, http://www.gbif.org), standards from the Biodiversity Information Standards organization (TDWG, http://www.tdwg.org) and expertise from LifeWatch INBO (http://lifewatch.inbo.be) to create and facilitate a systematic workflow. Alien species data are gathered from a large set of regional, national and international initiatives, including citizen science data, with a wide taxonomic scope from marine, terrestrial and freshwater environments. Observation data are funnelled in repeatable ways to GBIF. In parallel, a Belgian checklist of alien species is established, benefiting from various taxonomic and project-based checklists foreseen for GBIF publication.

The personnel involved in the project:

Sampling Methods

See Boets et al. (2016).

Study Extent See Boets et al. (2016).
Quality Control See step description.

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

Alternative Identifiers 289244ee-e1c1-49aa-b2d7-d379391ce265
https://ipt.inbo.be/resource?r=alien-macroinvertebrates-checklist