Main Event 2015
GEO Biodiversity Day 2015 in Germany’s Elbtalaue
The main event of the 17th GEO Biodiversity Day took place in collaboration with 'Living flood plains for the river Elbe', a project organised by BUND (Friends of the Earth Germany).
With a comprehensive visitor programme ranging from field trips to exhibitions, international biologists came together around the question 'How much space does nature require: where are the limits of biodiversity?'
The experts discovered around 1400 animal and plant species in the Elbe lowlands around the peninsula Hohe Garbe in the region of Saxony-Anhalt, including the bat Myotis daubentonii and the plants Eragrostis albensis and Statiotes aloides. A particularly exciting find was the beetle Tenebrio opacus, a primeval forest relict species that lives in the dead wood of oak trees and is included in the Red List of endangered species. They also came across five Ascomycetes that had never been observed in Saxony-Anhalt before, including four Mollisia species and one species hitherto unknown in Germany that was found growing on the dead stalks of Euphorbia palustris, a flowering plant included in the Red List.