Research

The aim of the project is to survey hoverflies, together with bees the most important pollinators worldwide, nationwide. This will be the standardised monitoring data for these important headline indicators for the first time in Austria. In addition, the flowering plants visited by the hoverflies are to be plants visited by hoverflies in order to gain knowledge about the pollen and nectar sources of hoverflies. Data on the occurrence and distribution of highly endangered hoverfly species in Europe will also be collected. Overall, the project fills a gap in Austria's biodiversity monitoring, also collects data on species that are highly endangered throughout Europe, and thus represents an important contribution to achieving the goals set out in the national biodiversity strategy. It establishes the headline indicator hoverfly in Austrian biodiversity monitoring.

Efficient and informative biodiversity monitoring is essential to detect changes in biodiversity at an early stage and is therefore an important component of the European/National Biodiversity Strategy 2030 and the European Green Deal. Objectives such as “Strategic expansion, national overall concept, trans-national cooperation and coordination, enabling success monitoring of the measures taken” were often mentioned last year. The members of the ABOL consortium (Austrian Barcode of Life) combine biodiversity monitoring expertise with genetic and taxonomic expertise. Most of the partners in this project have already formed a successful consortium for the basis of the DNA barcoding as part of the university space structure funding project “Development of university DNA barcoding pipelines for ABOL - the Austrian biodiversity initiative “Austrian Barcode of Life” (duration: 03.2017-12.2021). Barcoding approach and are therefore ideally suited to lead a project based on it. In addition, most members of the project consortium also cooperate in the BMBWF's ATIV-Biodat infrastructure project (duration: 03-2023-12/2026). In this project, important stakeholders beyond the universities are involved who contribute essential competencies in the area of ​​biodiversity documentation - national parks, EU, states, ministries, Federal Environment Agency and natural history museums, but also international programs and initiatives.

Complete monitoring of biodiversity not only includes recording changes in the abundance of individual species or composition of groups of species, but also recording changes in the status of populations. Land use elements such as islandization and habitat reduction influence genetic characteristics and can increase the trend towards biodiversity loss. This is recognized as a key aspect of the biodiversity crisis, but long-term observations to estimate this effect are rare. The aspect is therefore only occasionally included in problem descriptions and management decisions. Genetic monitoring as the observation of changes in the genetic properties of populations, in contrast to the determination of species compositions using DNA-based methods, is rarely implemented and when it is, then only with individual species, such as. B. in Switzerland as part of general monitoring. With the introduction of second and third generation DNA analysis techniques (NGS), new approaches for routine screening for genotyping are available. Particularly useful is a method that combines traditional and new capabilities with high throughput and statistical power, but is easy to use and implement. A method that can complement existing approaches until genomic approaches are widely adopted. In recent years we have developed such a method (SSR-GBS; SSR-GBAS), which we use in the area of ​​nature conservation and resource management. We propose to introduce it in a relevant model and thus use it for standardized monitoring. The method allows the detection of a large number of markers (routinely around 100) and the cost-effective, parallel measurement of several thousand samples. The main problem when using NGS for genotyping is bioinformatic processing, especially to clearly determine the alleles. The genotyping method by amplicon sequencing (GBAS) maximizes the information content and reproducibility, which allows extensive automation of the evaluation. This is essential for standardized data collection, which is necessary for monitoring.