The Environmental and Evolutionary Biology Research Unit (URBE) at the University of Namur brings together a dynamic, international community of scientists with a wide range of complementary areas of expertise.

  • Aquatic experimental systems
    • Maintenance and experimental use of freshwater organisms, including fish, Daphnia and other aquatic invertebrates
    • Controlled aquatic exposure experiments
    • Mesocosm/microcosm experiments
    • Manipulation of environmental conditions (temperature, light, nutrients, pollutants, etc.)
    • Experimental work on species interactions and communities
  • Ecotoxicology & environmental stress
    • Design and implementation of ecotoxicological experiments
    • Chemical and multiple-stressor exposure experiments
    • Assessment of physiological, behavioural and ecological responses to pollutants
    • Environmental risk and effect assessment
  • Microbiology & microbial ecology
    • Culturing of microorganisms, including fungi and bacteria
    • Microbial growth experiments
    • Soil and root microbiome analyses
    • Microbial community characterization
  • Molecular biology & genomics
    • DNA/RNA extraction and sample preparation
    • PCR/qPCR and related molecular techniques
    • Sequencing workflows and preparation of samples for sequencing
    • Genotyping and molecular identification
    • Bioinformatics and analysis of genomic/metagenomic data
  • Cellular & physiological measurements
    • Flow cytometry
    • Physiological assays and biomarkers
    • Measurements of organismal responses to environmental stress
    • Microscopy and image-based measurements
  • Behavioural measurements
    • Quantification of animal behaviour
    • Imaging/video-based tracking
    • Experimental analysis of responses to environmental cues, including light and predation
  • Ecological field work
    • Sampling of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems
    • Biodiversity and community surveys
    • Environmental monitoring
    • Collection and processing of biological and environmental samples
  • Soil & ecosystem measurements
    • Soil and rhizosphere sampling
    • Enzyme activity measurements
    • Nutrient and biogeochemical measurements
    • Plant–soil–microorganism interaction experiments
  • Experimental evolution & adaptation
    • Experimental studies of acclimation and adaptation
    • Common-garden and controlled-environment experiments
    • Quantification of fitness and demographic responses
  • Quantitative ecology & statistics
    • Experimental design
    • Generalized linear and mixed-effects models
    • Bayesian and hierarchical modelling
    • Multivariate/community-data analysis
    • Time-series and longitudinal-data analysis
    • R-based statistical analysis and reproducible workflows
  • Ecological & mathematical modelling
    • Population and community dynamics
    • Differential-equation models
    • Lotka–Volterra and other interaction models
    • Metacommunity and spatial ecological models
    • Food-web models
    • Dynamical-systems analysis
    • Linking experiments and observational data to mechanistic models
  • Data science & computational biology
    • Management and analysis of large ecological datasets
    • Simulation-based analyses
    • Bioinformatics
    • Reproducible computational workflows and scientific programming