S. Mahunka szerk.: Folia Entomologica Hungarica 46/1. (Budapest, 1985)
Fig. 60. Vertical distribution of the bumblebee species in North Korea. : Species common with Kamtchatka in SW, and two out of the four species obtained only from SE belong also to this northern group (Table 2). It is noteworthy that six out of 11 Siberian elements are common with Kamtchatka (Table 2; ITO and SAKAGAMI op. cit. ; POPOV op. cit.). Virtually no detailed and uptodate information from Far-Eastern part of Siberia excluding Kamtchatka and Ussuri-Amur is available.The faunal similarity between those two remote areas, being different both in altitude and latitude, indicates the relatively uniform bumblebee fauna in a vast region between the two areas. Most specimens from NE and a few ones from SE had altitudinal data. Those from SW have no such data but they should be apparently collected at lowlands or low mountains (cf. Fig. 1). The altitudinal distribution of the Korean bumblebees is crudely depicted based on the studied materials (Fig. 60). Four out of six species common with Kamtchatka were not obtained below 1.400 m alt. These species may actually occur in the area below this level, but their adherence to mountaneous habitats seems evident. On the other hand, the species of relatively southern origin, B. ignitus , opulentus and koreanus , were recorded in SW or SE, and not in NE, agreeing with the previous result. The forms collected in all three areas, B. ussurensis , and those obtained in SE alone, B. consobrinus wittenburgi, hypocrita sapporoensis and tricornis , may represent a group of intermediate distributional trends. All these forms excluding Eurosiberian B. consobrinus have relatively northerly ranges among the Manchurian elements in the wider sense (SAKAGAMI op. cit.; TKALCU 1968b). Therefore, they possibly represent southerly invaders to the peninsula. It may be chorologically important that the first three species occur in Honshu, Japan, as typically ( B. ussurensis , consobrinus) or relatively ( B. hypocrita) mountaneous species. As fully discussed by SAKAGAMI (op. cit.; cf. also ITO and MUNAKATA 1979), colonization of the bumblebees from Asiatic Continent to the Japan archipelago was established by two routes: northern one via Tatar st. - Soya st. - Tsugaru st. and southern one via Korean Peninsula - Korean st. - Tsushima st. Among the three forms, the first two are absent in Saghalien and Hokkaido. Therefore, their invasion via the south-
