S. Mahunka szerk.: Folia Entomologica Hungarica 29/1. (Budapest, 1976)
description: many of the specimens have two humerais of equal length, and some of the females have almost uniformly dark abdomen; thus the correct identification is possible only by the examination of the genitalia of females and males. Many of the specimens are slightly brachypterous: the wings are more or less shortened and narrowed. It is a wholly new feature among the wild populations of the Hungarian species of Drosophila . The above data reveal, a highly valuable material, in which there are 872 specimens of 44 Sphaerocerid and 140 specimens of eleven Drosophilid species. To make a comparison we can say that about 35 per cent of the 115 Sphaerocerid species is true terricolous species or they are in close relations with the soil fauna. The bulk of these species are represented also in these materials. Of course, not only the true terricolous species are collected with soil traps but also coprophagous species (e.g. Coproica spp., Elachisoma aterrimus , Li mosina bifrons and mirabilis) and the species living in mud [iT. (Rachispoda) spp] are caught, or broadly speaking, the soil traps can catch imagines of all the species, which - even if rarely - crawl on soil surface. The separation of the latter ones from the true terricolous species requires at least a rough knowledge of every species of the whole fauna (e. g. the Sphaerocerid fauna of Hungary comprises 50 % coprophagous species, 35 % terricolous species, 12 % of the whole fauna develop in mud, and two percent true cave-dwelling species.) When studying our data, it is obvious that the terricolous Sphaerocerid and Drosophilid fauna of the Hortobágy National Park are rather poor, which can be explained by the strongly secondary state of that area, by the comparatively big changes of the ground water level and by the fact that at least a part of the territory is covered with water for a longer period of time in every year; however, the revival of the soil fauna is a rather long process, which is interrupted from time to time by inundations. In order to correctly interpret my data I thought to give a more precise definition of the term "terricolous" for the studied fly species. The larvae of a part of the species collected in fact live in the soil but their imagines fly well and are present in or on the soil during egg-laying only, or may hide in it temporarily. In the case of the other part of the species also the imagines accomodated to the conditions of the soil in which their larvae live [e.g. C. (Apterina) pedestris, Puncticorpus spp., Limosina pullula, etc. ]. It is very probable that in the case of Sphaerocerids and Drosophilids this latter is the more advanced state from a phylogenetic point of view. It seems proper to restrict the meaning of the term "terricolous" sensu lato for the occurrence of a species in the soil only; because the larvae which occur in the soil can feed on the amorphous dead plant materials (saprophagous spp.), they can be carrion feeders or consumers of mycelia of fungi or consumers of mushrooms or also species, which live in the burrows of small mammals. Thes interesting problems are not discussed here, only the attention is called to some of the available literature. (HACKMAN 1963, 1964, 1967, RICHARDS 1930, PAPP 1972, PAPP&PLACHTER 1976, etc.) But a diagram is given, which shows the possible ways of the life-habit changes during the phylogenesis of the Sphaerocerid species in question.
