Publicaties

Aggressive encounters occur between competitors (particularly males) throughout the animal kingdom, and in some species can result in severe injury and death. Here we describe for the first time lethal interactions between male nematodes and provide evidence that the expression of this behaviour is developmentally controlled. Males of the entomopathogenic nematode Steinernema longicaudum coil around each other, resulting in injuries, paralysis ...

We assessed 301 taxonomic papers published in nine journals between 1999-2011 to determine the use of type specimens and to evaluate the habitat focus and the number of new species described per year. A total of ca 100 new nematode species were described every year, primarily from terrestrial habitats. Two-thirds were terrestrial, 16% were aquatic and the remaining 9% were animal-parasitic nematodes. Only 2.5% of the taxonomic literature ...

Many nematode species are candidate predators of other nematodes. However, the impact of predation on prey population dynamics and assemblage structure is unknown. We performed microcosm experiments in which the effect of the predacious nematode Enoploides longi-spiculosus on the population development of 2 prey nematode species, Diplolaimelloides meyli and D. oschei, was investigated at different predator abundances. One experiment used ...

Rice diterpenoid phytoalexins (DPs) are secondary metabolites with a well known role in resistance to foliar pathogens. As DPs are also known to be produced and exuded by rice roots, we hypothesised that they might play an important role in plant–nematode interactions, and particularly in defence against phytoparasitic nematodes. We used transcriptome analysis on rice roots to analyse the effect of infection by the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne ...

The Diagnostic Centre for Plants at ILVO is the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) for plant nematology in Belgium. We receive about 1500 samples annually for nematode detection and identification. Half of the samples are brought in by the National Plant Protections Service (FAVV) and consist of soil samples taken in fields and nurseries, and from plants and substrates in international trade. The other half are mainly soil samples brought in by ...