Broad Scarlets reach Brussels as summers warm

July 11, 2026

(Crocothemis erythraea) — a dragonfly of Mediterranean origin — have become a fixture at Brussels ponds only in this past decade. Between July 1 and 9, ten individuals were logged patrolling the water margins, expanding their range northward alongside warming summer temperatures. Their arrival marks a shift in the region's dragonfly fauna.

and were hunting alongside them — a combination of odonates that would have been unthinkable in these waters a generation ago. The pond community is being reshaped by climate, and what once seemed like vagrant records are now becoming the established summer guild.

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June 29, 2026

(Isoaeschna isoceles) have been active across the Sonian forest ponds for two consecutive summers now — 76 records logged at Auderghem, Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, and Hoeilaart between late May and late June. This is not a coincidence. The species has a strict ecological requirement: its larvae develop in water soldier beds, and they cannot tolerate polluted water. The larvae feed in the floating rosettes for years before emerging.Two straight years of sightings at the same sites signals a genuine if quiet recovery in these forest waters. The presence of water soldier and the hawkers that depend on it is a marker of improving water quality — the kind of signal that takes time to accumulate and is easily missed without patient, attentive watching over seasons.This is recovery worth noting in a region where freshwater dragonfly communities have been under long-term pressure from eutrophication and habitat loss.

Four-lined Giant Mayfly returns to urban Belgian streams

July 6, 2026

(Ephemera glaucops) appeared on the wing at Friche Josaphat in late June—a striking recovery for a species that vanished from urban Brabant by mid-century. The nymphs are burrowing larvae that spend two full years in stream sediment before emerging, which means their return signals two years of water quality good enough to sustain them through development. (both C. horaria and ) appeared the same week downstream at Domaine des Silex, with smaller mayflies documented at La Hulpe by week's end. Nine mayfly records across 60 days and 20 kilometers is not a surge—but it is a quiet signal. These insects were absent long enough that their return, even at low numbers, marks a meaningful shift in stream ecology and chemistry in this urban corridor.

Fire salamanders hunt the damp summer night

June 24, 2026

The oldest trees near Pentagone hold moisture long after the sun goes down. Bark loosens from decaying trunks, leaf litter mats into layers along the roots, and the soil beneath stays cool even on the longest days of early summer. This is the habitat a fire salamander needs: not water exactly, but the dampness that collects where wood rots and invertebrates shelter. After dark, when the temperature drops and humidity rises, these animals move through it slowly and deliberately, working the ground with their tongues.Fire salamanders are not fast hunters. They are patient ones. A salamander will press itself close to a rotting log, tongue flicking to detect chemical traces left by earthworms, slugs, woodlice, and beetle larvae buried in the soft wood. The tongue strike itself is quick, but the approach is not. They cover ground methodically, quartering damp patches the way a dog works a scent trail, returning to productive spots on successive nights. Early summer is a critical feeding window for them. Females in particular are building reserves, because fire salamanders give birth to live larvae, small aquatic young that they carry internally until the larvae are ready to be deposited in a stream or seep. That investment is metabolically expensive, and the richness of summer invertebrate life in the leaf litter is what makes it possible.The spotted longhorn beetle connects to this indirectly, and the connection runs through the same rotting wood. Spotted longhorn beetles are flower visitors as adults, conspicuous in early summer on hogweed and bramble, but their larvae develop inside dead and dying hardwood, feeding on the decaying tissue for one to three years before emerging. The frass and soft galleries they leave behind create exactly the loose, moisture-retaining substrate that concentrates the smaller invertebrates a fire salamander hunts. A beetle larva in its gallery is also, occasionally, prey itself. Salamanders are not selective in the way a specialist predator is. If something soft-bodied and slow is present in the wood, and the salamander encounters it, it will eat it. The beetle's larval stage and the salamander's hunting range overlap in the same decomposing wood, and what the beetle larva modifies in the wood, the salamander's other prey then colonizes.The fire salamander is a threatened species here. Its presence near Pentagone depends on two things that urban green spaces often lack: standing deadwood left in place, and a water source close enough for larvae to be deposited. The European stag beetle, also recorded in this area and also threatened, shares the dependence on deadwood. Both species are indicators of something the site is doing right, that some of the old wood is being left to decay rather than cleared. The Asian lady beetle, an invasive species now abundant here, competes with native invertebrates for aphid prey and disrupts the food web at the smaller end, but its effect on the specific community of woodlice, worms, and beetle larvae that salamanders rely on is less direct.