Current lab members

Eliza Van De Sande completed her BSc at VUB working on cacao pollination. Later she enrolled in the TROPIMUNDO programme and completed a MSc degree in tropical ecology working on mutualistic relationships in Nepenthes plants in Malaysia. In 2021 she was awarded an FWO SB fellowship to work on cacao pollination. She is reconstructing global variation in cacao pollinators and test different techniques to promote production of cacao pollinators in plantations.

Lisa Partoens completed an MSc at KULeuven. In her PhD we study wetland connectivity in the Western Palearctic in the context of water bird migration. Lisa simulates effects of sea level rise on connectivity and investigates the effectiveness of EU LIFE projects that focused on wetland restoration on water bird species.

Vincent Dolmans has a MSc degree in Ecology and Biodiversity from VUB. He acquired an FWO SB PhD fellowship. In his project “Birdscapes” we study how wetland habitats in Flanders provide resources for migrating water birds. We analyze prey distributions, calculate their nutritional value and use foraging models to estimate which water birds benefit from which types of prey.

Aranya Pathak Broome has an MSc in Tropical Biodiversity and Ecosystems at VUB. She joined the lab in 2024 to study wetland restoration with a focus on water birds and tries to merge insights from literature, restoration practitioners and local stakeholders.

Leonard De Causmaecker was awarded an FWO SB PhD fellowship and investigates novel methods to monitor insects and other flying organisms. After first developing camera based insect sensors during his BSc and MSc projects at VUB he is now experimenting with a LIDAR based set-up in close collaboration with professor Mikkel Brydegaard from Lund University in Sweden and co-supervisor Valéry Ann Jacobs at VUB. As an engineer, Leonard loves to develop new technological tools. He also enjoys oversize scarfs.

James Hagan has an MSc in Tropical Biodiversity and Ecosystems at VUB and a PhD from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Throughout his PhD he collaborated with our group at VUB resulting in a joint paper on biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships. Now, he is back as a post-doc to strengthen the group’s research lines on automated biodiversity monitoring. He will work closely with PhD student Leonard De Causmaecker and our collaborators from the engineering department at VUB to develop new technology and analysis methods for biomonitoring.