MODIRISK: Mosquito vectors of disease, collection, monitoring and longitudinal data from Belgium

The MODIRISK project aimed at studying biodiversity of mosquitoes and monitoring/predicting its changes, and hence actively prepares to address issues on the impact of biodiversity change with particular reference to invasive species and the risk of introducing new pathogens. This is essential in the perspective of the ongoing global changes creating suitable conditions for the spread of invasive species and the (re)emergence of vector-borne diseases in Europe. The main strengths of the MODIRISK project in the context of sustainable development were the links between biodiversity and health-environment and its contribution to the development of tools to better describe the spatial distribution of mosquito biodiversity. MODIRISK addressed key topics of the global initiative Diversitas, which was one of the main drivers of the 'Research programme Science for a Sustainable Development' from the Belgian funding agency Belspo (www.belspo.be). Three Different MODIRISK datasets were published on GBIF (1) The collection dataset, which contains the Culicidae collection in the Museum of Natural History RBINS in Brussels. (2) The inventory dataset, which holds the data of the MODIRISK inventory effort and (3) the longitudinal dataset holding experiment data used for risk assessments.