Research

Winter dormancy is a recurring period of suspended development and reproduction, allowing insects to survive harsh conditions. It may occur as an immediate response to adverse conditions (quiescence), or as diapause, a more complex and dynamic process. Facultative diapause is triggered by specific environmental cues that precede unfavourable conditions, typically by decreasing photoperiod. Obligate diapause is genetically fixed, independent of environmental conditions. Winter dormancy is associated with reduced activities and metabolic adjustments. The oligophagous, koinobiont endoparasitic wasp Glyptapanteles liparidis is a key natural enemy of the spongy moth, Lymantria dispar, a major defoliating pest in oak forests. Despite of a long history of research in this parasitoid-host-system, the overwintering biology of G. liparidis is still poorly understood. Eggs or first instar wasp larvae overwinter inside a caterpillar host. Since the univoltine spongy moth passes the winter months inside the egg, the multivoltine G. liparidis is dependent on alternative lepidopteran hosts that overwinter as larvae. A possible overwintering host is Lasiocampa quercus, a common species in oak forests with a wide ecological amplitude. The moth passes the winter months as early or intermediate instar larva; however, their overwintering biology has not been studied sufficiently. Our goal is to investigate the overwintering strategy of the parasitic wasp and its potential overwintering host, and whether the system might also be susceptible to asynchronicity due to changing environmental conditions. We will characterize and compare the induction, duration, and depth of winter dormancy in G. liparidis and L. quercus in laboratory and semi-field trails. Specifically, various day lengths and temperature combinations will be used in different phases of the life cycle of host and parasitic wasp. Parasitized hosts will be dissected at specific intervals to determine the developmental progress of the wasp larvae inside the host. Metabolic changes such as food consumption and feces production, oxygen consumption, the ability to supercool, and specific metabolites such as glycogen, trehalose, polyols, amino acids, and proteins will be assessed.

This research project will revolutionize forest inventory throughout Austria in a long-term and sustainable way. Thus, the project is of nationwide relevance . Due to the practical and target group oriented nature of the project, the research results will be available to a broad audience and will provide forest owners, forest enterprises, service providers and authorities with a planning tool for the creation and maintenance of climate-smart forests. The methods to be developed in the project should be implementable as a standard solution for the highly precise and spatially explicit inventory of raw wood reserves and the operational planning of forest enterprises based on it. By combining modern, laser-based field survey methods (partly with commercially available mobile devices such as Apple iPhone and iPad) and remote sensing methods, planning uncertainties of careful and sustainable forest management can be minimized, the productivity of different timber harvesting methods can be predicted and thus the risks and costs of forest enterprises can be reduced. The methods thus contribute to the preservation of protective forest tasks and nature conservation functions as well as to the establishment of "climate-smart" mountain forests in Austria. The Austrian forest ownership communities and larger forest enterprises with regular sample inventory and forest management benefit from digital inventory solutions with person-carried laser scanners (PLS) as well as the area-accurate stock and assortment and productivity forecasts achieved by combining PLS data with remote sensing data. Low-threshold access to an easy-to-use and digital inventory and planning tool will create incentives for regular and sustainable forest management in Austria's small private forests.

In this project, novel scenarios are tested and evaluated, and work is done on how to bring "common sense" into robots. The approach followed is "human-in-the-loop", combining the advantages of human experts with the advantages of AI. Specifically, this project tests and evaluates deployment scenarios of robots in forestry technology and presents new deployment scenarios. The novelty of this approach allows us to explore basics in terms of requirements, challenges and future possibilities in dealing with such systems, thus paving the way for more advanced basic projects or applications. Specifically, this project is expected to result in a series of international publications and an infrastructure to research and test the fundamentals for the use of future AI technologies and to apply them in teaching. Finally, the emerging robot test park in Tulln – adjacent to the new House of Digitalization - may also generate broad interest in the topic. The research methodology follows a 3G pioneer research approach with agile human-centered design: generation 1 testing of existing technology, generation 2 adaptation of existing technology with low-cost means, generation 3 advanced adaptation that goes beyond the state of the art and is planned together with our partners in Canada and UK - world leading robotics institutes. The infrastructure funded by this proposal will serve existing projects and is intended to spur new, larger projects (e.g.,EU). Added values are planned on three levels: 1) for the international AI research community through publications, 2) for the state of Lower Austria through a) later practical usage possibilities, and b) as an important contribution to teaching and making AI education more attractive to young researchers to counteract the labor shortage in AI.