A Ph-d Position

**Votre mission**:
**Context**

**Description of the project SUNLOOP “Spontaneous Urban Nature and LOcal nO net land take Policies”**

The SUNLOOP project addresses the challenges posed by biodiversity loss and climate change in urban environments, focusing on spaces of Spontaneous Urban Nature (SUN) as area providing multiple ecosystem services within the context of « No Net Land Take » policies. These policies, that are generalizing throughout Europe, aim to limit the artificialization of urban surfaces, making wastelands, derelict spaces, and any informal green spaces valuable for urban development. Despite their potential social and ecological benefits, these spaces are often neglected due to their marginalization in urban planning. The project seeks to enhance understanding and awareness of SUN spaces that already exist in the urban fabric. The goal is to influence urban planning policies by integrating the socio-ecological value of spontaneous biodiversity.

The project’s objectives are:

- To define SUN spaces according to various representations, professional practices (including scientific ones), policies and territorial contexts, with a focus on the interrelations between spontaneous nature and urban biodiversity.
- To understand how the socio-ecological knowledge and representations of SUN spaces can be enhanced by a pluridisciplinary approach involving architects, planners, landscape architects, ecologists, biologists, pedologists, geographers, sociologists, geographic information specialists, artists.
- To uncover conditions under which representations and actions (or voluntary lack of actions) on SUN spaces effectively form Nature-based solutions in urban areas.
- To understand the discrepancy between the perception of the biodiversity of a space and the actual biodiversity supported by this space, to encourage a change of viewpoint on the part of local actors, to recognize multiple values, potentials, as well as downsides on the role of SUN spaces and the services they provide in urban planning.
- To strengthen the international networking of local actors and academics who are committed to maintaining and enhancing SUN spaces and to propose integrated methods in urban policies to do so.

**Your Mission**

Ph-D research is focused on three objectives:
***QUALIFYING AND UNDERSTANDING Spontaneous Urban Nature (SUN) IN LOCAL CONTEXTS, with a focus on pollinators, **aiming at:

- Development of sampling methods of biodiversity;
- Coordination with the other Belgian partners (Meise and Natagora);
- Coordination with the other European partners from WP3;
- Development of field sampling in the sites of Charleroi (12 sites).

**Analyze the links between biodiversity, soil, climate and habitat characteristics, **aiming at:

- conducting statistical analyses and functional characterization of the soil, vegetation and insect biodiversity;
- Comparing types of urban spaces following an intervention gradient (based on public data or citizen science) with maps on a territorial scale to identify the sites’ complementarity with other open spaces as refuges and/or corridors

**Participate to the evaluation of the potential support, regulation (by climate pressure or usage of these spaces) and cultural co-benefits and their interrelations**

The analysis will be presented in the form of a scientific report, with the aim of producing a scientific journal article at the end of the mission.

**Other tasks linked to the overall project**

**Description of the Team**
- PULSE (IUCN), which is coordinated by the Laboratory of Zoology (Denis Michez), and aims to update the European Red List of bees [9].

[1] Danforth, B. N., et al. (2013). The impact of molecular data on our understanding of bee phylogeny and evolution. Annual review of Entomology, 58, 57-78. [2] Carvalheiro, L. G., et al. (2013). Species richness declines and biotic homogenisation have slowed down for NWEuropean pollinators and plants. Ecology letters, 16(7), 870-878. [3] Michez, D., et al. (2008). Phylogeny and host-plant evolution in Melittidae sl (Hymenoptera: Apoidea). Apidologie, 39(1), 146-162. [4] Roger, N., et al. (2017). Impact of pollen resources drift on common bumblebees in NW Europe. Global Change Biology, 23(1), 68-76. [5] Duchenne, F., et al. (2020). Phenological shifts alter the seasonal structure of pollinator assemblages in Europe. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 4(1), 115-121. [6] Ghisbain, G., et al. (2023). The new annotated checklist of the wild bees of Europe (Hymenoptera: Anthophila). Zootaxa, 5327(1), 1-147. [7] Ghisbain, G., et al. (2024). Projected decline in European bumblebee populations in the twenty-first century. Nature, 628(8007), 337-341. [8] Michez, D., et al. (2019). Bees of Europe (NAP editions). [9] Nieto, A., et al. (2014). European Red List of bees. Luxembourg: Publication Office of the European Union.

Kévin Tougeron is head of the EICG laboratory since 2023. The laboratory works on the study of interact