Gloria extended version. Implementation of Zoology in the GLORIA Summit Monitoring Programme in Gesäuse National Park

The GLORIA programme includes a network of international ecological climate impact research that specialises in the impact of climate change on mountain ecosystems and their biodiversity. In 2001, the GLORIA network was founded in Europe. Meanwhile, the standardised GLORIA monitoring program is used worldwide in over 100 research areas on six continents. The more than 100 research teams repeat the studies at intervals of five to ten years. Climate monitoring is one of the key buzzwords in ecological research of the 21st century. Especially for animal endmites living in summit regions, climate change is of the utmost importance, global warming is an acute cause of danger for the mostly coldestothermal species. The design for botanical investigations developed by Georg Grabherr and Harald Pauli (Vienna) is highly successful and is now used worldwide. Consideration of zoology is technically useful and also necessary, because animal organisms and communities react in a different way and in a different temporal pattern than plants. Animal communities are particularly suitable as indicator organisms in the Alpine and Nival stages. Furthermore, animal communities can massively influence the development of plant societies. On the one hand, this is done directly through the feeding activity of plants through phytophage (cicadas, leaf and trunk beetles, bedbugs part., snails, etc.) on the other indirectly via predators (spinnings, weavers, barrel beetles, short-wing beetles, etc.) as a regulatory of the phytophages. In order to obtain representative statements for the entire Alpine communities on the effects of climate change in summit regions, zoological surveys are appropriate and necessary. Only the knowledge of the wildlife in the monitoring areas also allows a separation of the causes of changes in vegetation due to climate change or influenced by animal communities.