Benthos as bird food

The existing qualitative monitoring will be extended with a quantitative approach for the dominant species (DQ methodology: dominant quantities). It is an alternative to the labour-intensive quantitative method and aims to gain a better understanding of the role of benthos as food for birds. Only the dominant species are important in the food chain and should therefore be measured quantitatively. This saves a great deal of work compared with conventional quantitative measurement. It should be investigated how many species are not monitored in this way and whether there is a risk that trends in species shift will be noticed too late.