S. Mahunka szerk.: Folia Entomologica Hungarica 27/2. (Budapest, 1974)
published, today, on the contrary, only a few papers discuss the braconid fauna of this region, although it must be emphasized that fortunately they are comprehensive and quite voluminous. Comparatively little is known on the Braconidae of theNeotropicsand even less on that of the Notogaea. With this rate of progress by the turning of the century we might say that we know the Braconidae fauna of the World. But the question immediately arises what can we say about systernaties, faunistics, zoogeography and bionomics? Our fields of research are unlimited yet - as it is the case in many other groups of animals. The most valuable braconid works of today have been compiled by R. D. SHENEFELT (USA). The year of 1965 was a milestone in Braconidae research, it was the year which witnessed the publication of the first and complete list of literature save some minor papers issued in obscure, hard-to-come-by periodicals, list of literature. There is only one exception to this, that is TELENGA's important work published in 1952 which SHENEFELT must have overlooked somehow. This list is well complemented by the Braconidae world catalogue issued since 1969 (SHENEFELT 1969, 1970a-b, 1972,1973). The last catalogue of this kind was published in 1904 compiled by GY. SZÉPLIGETI, when the known number of species was 3731. Today, as it has already been mentioned above, approximately 13.000 species have to be catalogued, no further comments are needed here, this number clearly speaks for itself! The work of compilation is aggravated by the dispersiveness of the literature and by the contradictory nature of the various statements published so far. The great merit of SHENEFELT' s work is that the catalogue reflects the present state of knowledge on Braconidae (PAPP 1971). The majority of Iehneumonoidea belongs to the big families of Ichneumonidae and Braconidae , nine further families come under this s-'Derfamily giving a mere 10 per cent of the total number. Ichneumonidae comprises sonu 15.000 species (TOWNES 1969),and Braconidae somewhat less of it, namely 13.000 species, thus they both may be called gigantic families. The enormous and ever increasing number of the species of Braconidae presents some problems in classification. With regret we have to confess that there is no one specialist today who is at home with all the known braconid species. Perhaps the last polyhistor of Braconidae was the Hungarian GY. SZÉPLIGETI at the turn of this century. He was well versed in world Braconidae except in North America. Most of his studies include the description of new species, but he also was aware of contemporary publications, he studied an immense number of specimens both at home and in foreign museums before erecting a new taxon. Naturally, the very same principle applies for us today . This sudden increase in the number of described species brought along several systematic and relating problems . Many subfamilies and tribes; have been treated in monographs which were aiming at a more precise classification of Braconidae . Various authors have various answers to certain specific, generic or other fundamental systematic questions. A great number of species have either been put into synonymy or placed into new combinations, in other cases synonyms have been validated again, names placed into a different genus or subfamily. The situation is further aggravated by the scanty knowledge of hosts . Of course, there are groups (e.g. Apanteles , Opius , Dacnusini , Braconini) with a fair amount of information, while the knowledge on the
