Projects
Microbiota profiling of the house fly, Musca Domestica KU Leuven
We share our living spaces with a variety of insects – some of them can be nuisance pests, others can be beneficial, and some insects we do not even notice. These insects carry with them an abundance of microbes, that can be either beneficial (sometimes even crucial) or pathogenic for them, serve as a food source or be part of the transient microbiota. While insects can introduce valuable diversity to the niches they inhabit, they can also ...
Conflict and cooperation between ants and ant-associated arthropods. KU Leuven
An intimate association between two species is known as a symbiosis. A symbiotic relationship where both partners benefit is defined as a mutualism. This is in contrast with parasitism, where one partner benefits at the expense of another partner. Commensalism is a third type of symbiotic association and is characterized by one partner that takes advantage of the association and the other is unaffected. These different types of symbioses are ...
Knowledge-based practices to efficiently control the little cherry disease Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
This project focused on a plant virus that threatens cherry cultivation, but also some flowering Prunus speces, namely the so-called Little Cherry virus (LChV). The aim was to develop a knowledge-based sustainable management strategy, and to implement this in practice. Concretely, we wanted to: (1) discover a number of crucial knowledge gaps around the virus (complex) (epidemiology, survival, ...
Turning black into golden soldier fly larvae (Hermetia Illucens): added value creation by exploring its microbiota and metabolism (ETOBIOTA). University of Antwerp
Exploration and exploitation of the gut microbiota of black soldier fly larvae (Hermetia illucens) KU Leuven
During the last decade, there is a revived interest in the use of insects in food and feed applications because of its potential as a sustainable protein source. One of the most widely reared edible insects is the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens, BSF). The voracious larvae of the black soldier fly (BSFL) can convert low-value organic substrates into their high-value larval biomass, thereby making BSFL highly suitable as an feed ...
Innovation and implementation of automatic monitoring and warning systems for pest insects to support a sustainable Flemish fruit and vegetable production pcfruit npo
Nowadays manual monitoring (checking pheromone traps, visual inspections, collecting samples from plants/trees, etc.) are time consuming and require specialized entomological expertise in order to recognize specific (life stages of) insects. The goal of this project is to facilitate/automate/digitize our monitoring and warning system. For this we focus on 4 target pests (including D. suzukii and codling moth) and two main techniques: camera ...
Tracking vectors of bacteria and phytoplasmas threatening Europe’s major crops Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
The aim of this project is to learn more about cicadas or Auchenorryncha, an insect group that lives on plant juices (phloem and xylem) which in Europe often come from cultivated crops. Because of their way of life they are communicator (or vector) of harmful organisms such as phytoplasmas and other vascular bundle bacteria. They therefore pose a serious threat to our agriculture and ...