The importance of Lanice conchilega reefs in trophic linkages in intertidal areas

This PhD thesis aims at improving our understanding of the structural and functional role of reefs constructed by the ecosystem engineer Lanice conchilega in natural soft substrate coastal ecosystems. This was achieved by keeping in mind a holistic approach regarding the formulation of the ecological hypotheses throughout the thesis. At first, the community and ecosystem ecology of L. conchilega was studied, followed by characterising trophic interactions taking place within the reef habitats and comprehensively combining ecosystem engineering and food webs. The general discussion combines the results of this thesis and discusses the role of L. conchilega reefs regarding the community composition, feedback effects, food web structure and carbon cycling in intertidal areas

Free-form 2.5D thermoplastic circuits using one-time stretchable interconnections

A technology is presented for the production of soft and rigid circuits with an arbitrary 2.5D fixed shape. The base of this technology is our proprietary technology for elastic circuits with a random shape, in which the elastic thermoset (mostly PDMS) polymer is now replaced by soft or rigid thermoplastic variants. An additional thermoforming step is required to transform the circuit from its initial flat to its final fixed 2.5D shape, but for rigid fixed shape circuits only one-time stretchability of the extensible interconnects is required, relieving the reliability requirements

EnsembleSVM: A Library for Ensemble Learning Using Support Vector Machines

EnsembleSVM is a free software package containing efficient routines to perform ensemble learning with support vector machine (SVM) base models. It currently offers ensemble methods based on binary SVM models. Our implementation avoids duplicate storage and evaluation of support vectors which are shared between constituent models. Experimental results show that using ensemble approaches can drastically reduce training complexity while maintaining high predictive accuracy. The EnsembleSVM software package is freely available online at http://esat.kuleuven.be/stadius/ensemblesvm.Comment: 5 pages, 1 tabl

Unbiased RNA shotgun metagenomics in social and solitary wild bees detects associations with eukaryote parasites and new viruses

The diversity of eukaryote organisms and viruses associated with wild bees remains poorly characterized in contrast to the well-documented pathosphere of the western honey bee, Apis mellifera. Using a deliberate RNA shotgun metagenomic sequencing strategy in combination with a dedicated bioinformatics workflow, we identified the (micro-)organisms and viruses associated with two bumble bee hosts, Bombus terrestris and Bombus pascuorum, and two solitary bee hosts, Osmia corn uta and Andrena vaga. Ion Torrent semiconductor sequencing generated approximately 3.8 million high quality reads. The most significant eukaryote associations were two protozoan, Apicystis bombiand Crithidia bombi, and one nematode parasite Sphaerularia bombi in bumble bees. The trypanosome protozoan C. bombi was also found in the solitary bee 0. corn uta. Next to the identification of three honey bee viruses Black queen cell virus, Sacbrood virus and Varroa destructor virus-1 and four plant viruses, we describe two novel RNA viruses Scaldis River bee virus (SRBV) and Ganda bee virus (GABV) based on their partial genomic sequences. The novel viruses belong to the class of negative-sense RNA viruses, SRBV is related to the order Mononegavirales whereas GABV is related to the family Bunyaviridae. The potential biological role of both viruses in bees is discussed in the context of recent advances in the field of arthropod viruses. Further, fragmentary sequence evidence for other undescribed viruses is presented, among which a nudivirus in 0. corn uta and an unclassified virus related to Chronic bee paralysis virus in B. terrestris. Our findings extend the current knowledge of wild bee parasites in general and addsto the growing evidence of unexplored arthropod viruses in valuable insects