Biodiversity Data Journal :
Short Communication
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Corresponding author: Grégoire Noël (gregoire.noel@uliege.be)
Academic editor: Nikolay Simov
Received: 09 Apr 2024 | Accepted: 10 Jun 2024 | Published: 19 Jun 2024
© 2024 Grégoire Noël, Arnaud Segers, Joachim Carpentier, Luca Rossini, Emanuele Garone, Frédéric Francis
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Noël G, Segers A, Carpentier J, Rossini L, Garone E, Francis F (2024) An update for Halyomorpha halys (Stål, 1855) (Hemiptera, Pentatomidae) distribution in Belgium. Biodiversity Data Journal 12: e125067. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.12.e125067
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The brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys, represents an important insect pest and subsequently an important agricultural threat due to its polyphagous feeding habits and adaptability to diverse climates. Native from East Asia, its recent establishment in various regions, including North America and Europe, has led to substantial yield losses and economic impacts, which highlight the need for comprehensive research efforts, based on data occurrence by combining those from expert entomologists and citizen scientists. We reported here 14 new occurrences of this insect pest in the three regions of Belgium. Then, these data were merged with data occurrences from other studies and GBIF datasets of Belgium. The combined dataset showed a peak of presence of Halyomorpha halys in October and a dominance of field observations from citizen scientists especially in the nothern part of Belgium, Flanders. Crowd-sourced data have provided valuable insights into the presence and distribution of Halyomorpha halys in Belgium. Given the importance of the generated dataset, it could be asserted that this pest is uniformly distributed across the entire country, which necessitates additional research to evaluate its impact on various crops.
Brown marmorated bug, pentatomid ecology, biological control, insect occurrence
The brown marmorated stink bug, Halyomorpha halys (Stål, 1855) (Hemiptera, Pentatomidae), is an harmful pest native to East Asia and inadvertently introduced, over the years, in different areas worldwide. During the 1990s, H. halys reached Pennsylvania, USA (
The wide diffusion of this sap-sucking pest is endorsed by its high adaptability to different climates and by an exceptional level of polyphagy. The current literature reports a feeding preference for hundreds of host plants (ca. 300) from multiple botanical families (
In Belgium, the taxonomic inventory revealed the presence of 46 distinct species belonging to the Pentatomidae family (
It is worth pointing out that, on one hand, only a small part of the identifications are rigorously carried out by insect specialists (insects prepared in collections and identified using dichotomous keys), which is essential for precise taxonomic identification that is free from any potential confusion. On the other hand, many reports are provided with pictures of the specimens, that should be validated by specialists. With this precondition, we can say that the crowd-sourced data are surely a helpful tool for researchers, but it needs support from ad hoc monitoring carried out in rigorous ways from research centres (
Given the high adaptability and diffusion rate of this species, carrying out a dataset update and identifying the situation in Belgium is fundamental. Accordingly, the goal of this data report is to: i) collate the new Belgian occurrences considering both crowd-sourcing data and monitoring carried out by experts and, ii) update the spatial and phenological distribution of this invasive pest in Belgium.
Belgian records of H. halys were extracted from the GBIF database on 1 February 2024, using the R package rgbif (
In this study, 14 new occurrences of H. halys (Fig.
Data distribution of Halyomorpha halys (Stål, 1855). A New records of H. halys (yellow dots) and from
BELGIUM. Brussels-Capital. Ixelles – 1 individual,
The link of their records can be found here: http://doi.org/10.15468/kuxuek
In contrast to the methodologies of crowd-sourcing data and participatory sciences, the trapping and collection of H. halys specimens in Belgium remains relatively sparse, as highlighted by a mere three specimens recorded by
In this study, we had the opportunity to work with a large dataset of validated identifications made by insect specialists. The sampling effort accumulated by Belgian crowd-sourcing platforms (i.e. Observation.be
GBIF dataset showed a peak in sightings of H. halys that can be primarily attributed to its overwintering behaviour as already reported by
Population genetic studies carried out on Belgian specimens (
In conclusion, we can say that the presence of this pest is currently homogeneous in the overall country and further experimentation devoted to assessing the potential damage induced on the different cultivations should be carried out. This is actually an important aspect to prevent higher outbreaks, as happened in different countries of Europe (i.e. Italy) (
L.R. is funded by the European Commission under the Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF-2022) project “PestFinder” Grant n. 101102281. All the authors are also grateful to Hugo Luttenschlager (ULiège) who took the pictures of Halyomorpha halys.