S. Mahunka szerk.: Folia Entomologica Hungarica 60. (Budapest, 1999)

FOLIA ENTOMOLOGICA HUNGARICA ROVARTANI KÖZLEMÉNYEK LX 1999 pp. 205-212 Species composition and occurrence of ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in the Pilis Biosphere Reserve, Hungary: a pitfall trap study F. Kádár and Gy. Szél Species composition and occurrence of ground beetles (Coleoptera: Carabidae) in the Pilis Biosphere Reserve, Hungary: a pitfall trap study — Ground beetle species assemblages were sampled by pitfall trapping from 15 topographically different sites of the Pilis Biosphere Reserve (a forest hill area in North Hungary). A total of 66 species representing 12,188 individuals were caught between 1982 and 1984. The most common species were Aptinus bombarda (Illiger), Abax parallelepipedus (Piller et Mitterpacher), Carabus scheidleri Panzer, Pterostichus melas (Creutzer) and P. melanarius (Illiger), which represented about 60 per cent of all adults collected. There are rare and interesting species among others: Harpalus marginellus Dejean, Licinus hoffmannseggi (Panzer) and Trechus pilisensis Csiki. Multivariate analysis showed that sites could be separated on the basis of relative frequency of species. Authors give comments on the most common and some rare species. INTRODUCTION Many papers report on carabids living in forest habitats, their faunal composition, distribution, seasonality, diversity (cf. Thiele 1977), but there are fewer wich cover the analysis of samples taken by standard method from a large area (e.g. Terrel-Nield 1990; Baguette 1993). Data set of carabid species assessed by standard sampling methods on larger areas may be useful for geographical classification (Heijerman and Turin 1989), habitat characterization and classification (Eyre and Luff 1994), bioindicating (Eyre et al. 1989), and environmental management (Pizzolotto 1994). The aim of this study was to gives an introductory picture on the composition and occurrence of carabid beetle species of a larger forest hill area, the Pilis Biosphere Reserve, Hungary, based on the use of a standardised sampling technique: pitfall trapping. There is no published investigation on the ground beetle assemblages of this area, save some scanty and old data on the presence of some species (Csiki 1917, 1946). MATERIAL AND METHODS The study area, the Pilis Biosphere Reserve (PBR) is located near the Danube river, about 40 km N of Budapest, Hungary. The main mass of the PBR is the Visegrád Mts