Vascular plants remain the key objects in the research of alpine biodiversity and prime indicators for biological monitoring of climate change in alpine habitats. However, other organisms have clear potential as biosensors as well. For example, insect herbivores appear to be more sensitive to climate change than their host plants (Hodkinson and Bird 1998). In general, animal species diversity may exceed plants by factors of five to ten (Körner 2001). Therefore zoologists are able to provide an important contribution in our understanding of alpine biodiversity patterns in general. Unfortunately only very few of us participate in European or global networking activities as actively as botanists do.
