Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS)
http://www.naturalsciences.be/index_html
Core Data
Identification
Hosting Legal Entity
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
Address:
Rue Vautier 29, Bruxelles, PO: 1000 (Belgium)
Location
Rue Vautier 29, Bruxelles, PO: 1000 (Belgium)
Structure
Type Of RI
Single-sited
Coordinating Country
Belgium
Status
Status
Current Status:
Operational
Scientific Description
Mission and objectives
The Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences is a Belgian Federal State institution. It is involved in important scientific research activities and carries out public service missions. With 37 million specimens conserved as Belgian Heritage of universal significance, the RBINS collections serve as reference and research tools. Its main scientific research areas concern the biodiversity and mechanisms involved in the evolution of Life; land, freshwater and marine ecosystems; the history of life; the geology of Belgium and modelling of the North Sea. It's Museum offers 16 000m2 of galleries, exhibitions and educational workshops.

RI Keywords
Expertise, Species, Specimens, Palaeontology, Evolution, Biodiversity, Entomology, Research, Excellence, Geology, Biology, Mammals, Focal point, DNA, Collections and archives, Services, Taxonomy, Infrastructure, Marine, Molecular, Ocean, Collaboration, Laboratories, Monitoring, Fresh water
Classifications
RI Category
Earth, Ocean, Marine, Freshwater, and Atmosphere Data Centres
Reference material repositories
Collections
Research Data Service Facilities
Environmental Management Infrastructures
Research Bibliographies
Earth Observation satellites
Data Archives, Data Repositories and Collections
Databases
Natural History Collections
Scientific Domain
Earth and Environmental Sciences
ESFRI Domain
Environment
Services
Operational Directorate (OD) ‘Earth and History of Life’

Micropalaeontology and Palaeobotany; Invertebrate Palaeontology, Vertebrate Palaeontology, Anthropology and Prehistory, General Geology and Mineralogy, Applied geology and geo-information.

Molecular systematic facility

The molecular systematic facility provides a dynamic working environment for researchers who aim at applying various DNA markers for molecular systematic research.

Scientific library

RBINS scientific library is one of the biggest documentary resources of Natural History in Belgium. It offers 695,368 volumes.

Geological Survey of Belgium

Geological Survey of Belgium.

Zoological collection

RBINS houses an exceptionally rich zoological collection with a total of 37,000,000 specimens with around 100,000 primary types.

Natural Environment Directorate

Consists in: the Management Unit of the North Sea Mathematical Model (MUMM); RBINS/DGD program on Biodiversity and capacity building for development; National Focal Point to the Convention on BioDiversity CBD; Belgian Biodiversity Platform; biological evaluation; freshwater biology.

Equipment
Molecular Systematic Facility

The Molecular Systematic Facility provides a dynamic working environment for researchers who aim at applying various DNA markers for molecular systematic research. Practical training in DNA analysis is provided within the context of collaborative research projects. It is equipped with an ABI 3130 capillary sequencer. This infrastructure allows for a wide variety of DNA marker analyses, though most applications involve nucleotide sequencing and microsatellite genotyping.

Collections scanning

A suite of equipment is available for scanning collections objects.The data and references are recorded in a common management tool developed by the RBINS ICT service.

Additional Data
Collaborations
Networks
SeaDataNet
CETAF - Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission/International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IOC/IODE)
Consortium for the Barcode of Life
LifeWatch
GBIF Nodes Network
Eurofleets (FP7)
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)
SciColl - Scientific Collections International