S. Mahunka szerk.: Folia Entomologica Hungarica 61. (Budapest, 2000)

special characteristics is that they are particularly sensitive to changes in their environment. Any changes occurring in soil state are function of their species composition, quantitative and dominancy ratios, in other words, they are ideal indicators of soil changes. The history of Oribatida research in Hungary goes back to 100 years. The first data, unfortunately, have not reached the high standard of the age (e.g. Michael 1898, Berlese 1896), nevertheless, even these early works (e.g. Karpelles 1893, Tafner 1905) demand our recognition. Besides the single work of Sellnick (1925), the real beginning was made by J. Balogh, when he published his research results in 1937, 1938 and 1939. It was he who published the first evaluating and summarizing work (Balogh 1943). The war and the following difficult time heavily affected research. Thus, quite some time had to elapse before research was resumed, at about the end of 1950s, but it was the beginning of the 1960s when the first significant results influencing faunal knowledge was reached (Balogh 1959, Csiszár 1960, 1961, 1962, Mahunka 1960, 1962, 1964, etc.). Unfortunately, following that again there was a recess, since the attention of Hungarian acarologists was arrested by the fauna of the tropics. But some 20 years later the study of the basic fauna of the national parks of Hungary again focused our powers (Mahunka 1983, 1987, etc.). At the same time identification keys for the series of the "Fauna of Hungary" were prepared and written up (Balogh and Mahunka 1983). Then again this promising work ceased and up to this date only the results gained in researches in nature conservations areas were published (Mahunka 1991, 1996, Mahunka and Mahunka-Papp 1999a). Meanwhile in Europe (Weigmann and Kratz 1981, Schatz 1983, Tarman 1984) later in North America (Marshall et al. 1987), then in New Zealand (Luxton 1885) and for the whole Oriental region, though without printing-shop publication (Corpuz-Raros 1989), first class catalogues and fauna lists were issued. The northern parts of the Palaearctic were covered by Karppinen et al. (e.g. 1982, 1992). Lately Romanian specialists (Vasiliu et al) issued a catalogue (1993), in Japan Fujikawa et al. (1993), newly Bernini et al. (1995) published Italian, Olszanowski et al. (1996) Polish and Coloff and Halliday (1998) Australian mite lists. Although very little was published, in the last 30 years extensive collectings had been carried out in the national parks and nature conservation areas, so in other words, regular research has been made particularly in the Szigetköz, in the Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County and elsewhere. On the other hand, no concise reports nor even summaries had been written. Now, in approaching the new century, and completing a millennium, in 1998 we decided to catch up with our arrears and to prepare a complete summary of the Oribatida fauna of Hungary. For this purpose we applied and won the support of the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA). The beginning of our work is marked by our study performed in the Szarvas Arboretum (Mahunka and Mahunka-Papp 19996). Now we reached the first stage of summarization and the compilation of a check-list, which is all the more justified since many typographical errors (e.g. incorrect spelling of species and author names, inexact dates of description) had been noticed. We are convinced that this preliminary check-list is ready for publication. The present work is a forerunner of a complete list of Hungarian Oribatida, which later will be followed by complete catalogues of other mite groups. The present list is arranged according to families within that the species names follow the alphabetical order, since in many families, even today, uncertainties are encountered as far as the relegation of genera is concerned. Of course, the species name is followed by the up-to-date combination. In order to precisely identify the name we give also the author's name indi-