Project Summary
The BeeKey project is a local initiative that aims to produce open-access taxonomic keys and didactic learning material that can be used to improve wild identification capacities in the country. The project started in June 2025, and it is expected to run until August 2026. It is administrated by the Beelibre core team of Fondation faune-flore (FFF), based at the National Museum of Natural History of Luxembourg (MNHNL) and financed by the funding line “Pollinisateurs” of the Ministère de l’Environnement, du Climat et de la Biodiversité (MECB). On an international level, it works in close collaboration with the project “European Pollinator Identification Courses (EPIC)” to provide training and certification for wild bee taxonomists in the Benelux region. Together, these initiatives complement each other with the aim of improving local wild bee taxonomic capacity for conservation purposes, in line with the EU-PoMS proposal and the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.
Project status
- Proposal accepted by the Ministre de l’Environnement, du Climat et de la Biodiversité.
- Host institution: Fondation faune-flore (FFF) @ Research Center, Musée national d’histoire naturelle (MNHNL).
- Researchers : Fernanda Herrera-Mesías, Antonio Cruz
- Partners: EPIC-Bee, ORBIT project
- Duration: July 2025 – December 2026
Contacts
- Alexander Weigand, Department of Zoology (MNHNL)
phone: (+352) 462240 212
alexander.weigand@mnhn.lu - Fernanda Herrera-Mesías
fernanda.herrera@ext.mnhn.lu - Antonio Cruz
antonio.dorosario@ext.mnhn.lu
Populations of the pond-breeding Northern crested newt (Triturus cristatus) have severely declined in Luxembourg during the last century. The species is listed on Annexes II and IV of the EU Habitats Directive (Council of the European Communities, 1992) and EU member states must therefore ensure the maintenance or, where appropriate, the re-establishment of a favourable state of conservation of the species’ and its habitats. In order to maintain the species’ metapopulation dynamics, more than 350 artificial freshwater bodies have been created in the west and southwest of the country since 1993. This conservation measure lacked a certain degree of effectiveness as fewer than 75% of the engineered ponds have been colonized by the target species. There is thus an urgent need to generate an evidence-based understanding of the movement ecology of crested newts in the Luxembourg context and to design and place engineered ponds appropriately. We present three work packages that will operate at different spatial scales and that will use population and landscape genetic methods to identify landscape factors influencing newt dispersal and population connectivity. Specifically, we will i) analyse the population genetic structure of the crested newt across Luxembourg in order to identify isolated populations and environmental factors that hinder exchange between populations, ii) model landscape connectivity at the regional scale to empirically identify landscape features that impact on exchange between ponds and to predict crested newt movements across the landscape, iii) identify optimal locations for new ponds using a systematic conservation planning (site-selection algorithm) approach. The overriding objective of the proposed research project is to identify efficient conservation measures that will ensure the long-term survival of crested newts in Luxembourg.