Colloquium of the Platform Biodiversity – River biodiversity in space and time
Freshwater systems such as rivers and lakes cover only about 2% of the Earth’s surface, but are home to an astonishing 10% of known species and about one-third of all…
Colloquium of the Platform Biodiversity – The beaver is back, hooray!? Habitat and conflict potential, current developments and management
Once widely distributed in Central Europe, then nearly eradicated except for small relict populations, the beaver (Castor fiber) is now returning to European river landscapes and also to South Tyrol.…
Colloquium of the Platform Biodiversity: Ants – behavior, climate change and hybridization
Saying ‘ants’, most people think of those small insects that need to be chased out of the kitchen. However, many people do not know that ants make essential contributions to…
Colloquium of the Platform Biodiversity: Native biodiversity: how it has changed and why
The landscape of South Tyrol has undergone significant changes in recent decades, unfortunately at the expense of native biodiversity. In this presentation, Erich Tasser gives an overview of the landscape…
Colloquium of the Platform Biodiversity: Revitalization of water courses in South Tyrol – A look into the practice
As throughout the Alps, rivers and streams in South Tyrol have undergone heavy modifications during agricultural development to protect crops from flooding and landslides. Rivers and streams have been straightened…
Colloquium of the Platform Biodiversity: Under the bark
A large part of the biodiversity of a forest consists of species that live “under the bark” of old or decaying trees, the so-called “saproxylic” species. These are organisms that,…
Colloquium of the Platform Biodiversity: the collection of South Tyrolean cereal landraces
Landraces are traditional varieties that have developed over time through environmental selection and conscious or unconscious breeding by farmers in a given place. In South Tyrol, systematic collection of landraces…
Colloquium of the Platform Biodiversity: Splitting eDNA in its fractions. Challenges and opportunities for a more reliable molecular biodiversity monitoring
The analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) is revolutionizing biodiversity monitoring as it allows to assess organismic diversity at large scale and unprecedented taxonomic detail. In this research, the researcher is…