Online identification of Mysida through NeMys

Identification of specimens is a task that every biologist is confronted with. The process of identification in many cases delivers many problems due to unavailability of keys, difficult specialised keys or old keys.Within NeMys (http://intramar.ugent.be/nemys) recently a new identification module has been added. Based upon morphological data derived from published literature, polytomous digital identification keys are made. This kind of keys has the advantage that users are not forced to follow a predefined pathway (as in dichotomous keys), users can choose their best suitable characteristics to work with and the keys can be easily updated with new insights through a fully online key-generation system.By using internet technologies, the identification keys are at any time anywhere available for use. As the data used in the keys is derived from the database system NeMys, it is also possible to check the identification process at any level, with literature sources, images, distribution patterns, … on the website of NeMys.This kind of technology opens new possibilities for biologists to share their taxonomic knowledge with a broader audience without being forced to go through the difficult process of creating dichotomous paper-based keys

Habitat suitability and community modelling of marine benthos = Modeleren van habitatgeschiktheid en gemeenschapsstructuren van marien benthos

This PhD focuses on the development of powerful statistical models which cope with modelling pitfalls typical for spatial data and data assembled from various sources, but which are often ignored. In this respect issues such as spatial autocorrelation, sampling bias and overfitting are addressed. The aim of this thesis is two-fold: adapting the current modelling process in such a way that potential pitfalls are revealed and circumvented; and getting insight in the ecology and biodiversity of the taxa under study on a small and large spatial scale. On a small scale 'species assembly rules' have been investigated for the nematode community; on a large spatial scale the diversity of nematode communities is modelled. This research focuses also on habitat suitability modelling of more than 100 nematode species and two macrobenthic species