Workshop Alpine Land Snails 2014

ABOL was one focus at the “Workshop alpine landsnails” in Johnsbach, Styria. Nikola Szucsich presented the ABOL project and pointed out the outstanding importance of nature conservation areas for biodiversity in general and thus for biodiversity research and conservation in particular. In this respect the National Park Gesäuse with its numerous endemics was an appropriate location to present the endeavours of the ABOL initiative to register the fauna and flora of Austria by means of integrative taxonomic methods and with a proper database solution.

One of the pilot projects in frame of ABOL, the register of Austrian mollusc species, was practised on site. Within excursions in the national park data on the mollusc fauna has been recorded, which will be part of the database. Besides that, a basic set of data is already available from former studies of the “Working group alpine landsnails” and from the rich scientific collections of the Natural History Museum in Vienna as well. Along these lines reports on the data quality of the collections and legal foundations of collecting as well as presentations about biodiversity studies from other parts of Austria complemented this DNA barcoding focus.

We would like to thank the management of the National Park Gesäuse for mental, organisational and financial support and the “Friends of the Natural History Museum Vienna” for financial support. Finally, we are grateful to all the participants of the workshop for being there, for the interesting discussions and the good mood!