Urbanization and agriculture are strongly modifying natural ecosystems and these land use changes are now considered as major drivers of biodiversity change. Yet, some species appear to be able to deal with human-created environments.

10h to 12h:  Open to all Prof. Julianne Meisner, University of Washington, Department of Global Health “Livestock and the epidemiology of sleeping sickness: mechanisms and implications” Julianne Meisner is a veterinarian and epidemiologist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington.

Xylella fastidiosa, a plant pathogenic bacterium colonizing xylem and transmitted by insects, is involved in severe outbreaks worldwide. X. fastidiosa establishes in a wide range of conditions including different host plants and vector species, making it highly unpredictable in not yet colonized areas.

The Kapuas River delta (KRD) is a low-lying marshy delta on the western coast of Borneo Island, Indonesia. In the last decades, palm oil cultivation and forest fires have encroached on the Kapuas water catchment areas, changing the Kapuas hydrological regime and triggering more intense flooding in the KRD.

La mycothèque de l’UCLouvain est mise à l’honneur cet été dans l’exposition Sciences & Culture au Palais organisée par la Politique scientifique fédérale (Belspo).

Lévy flights are a specific model of random walks that appear to be ubiquitous across many different fields where the dispersal process is faster than dictated by Brownian motion. Lévy flights consist of a succession of random displacements whose step lengths have a heavy-tailed probability distribution.

Paleosols, developed under the influence of past environmental conditions, are considerably valuable archives of past environments and soil formation. The Chinese Loess Plateau has a vertical alternation of Aeolian sediment (loess) and paleosols formed therein. These paleosols were formed during the interglacials, including the Quaternary.