O. Merkl szerk.: Folia Entomologica Hungarica 66. (Budapest, 2005)

twenty years of his lifetime he remained faithful to these two taxonomically highly difficult groups. Between 1896 and 1903 he published ten papers on the braconid species of historical Hungary (or the Carpato-Pannonian zoogeographical district). With these contributions, listing about four hundred species, SZÉPLIGETI presented the first survey of braconids in Hungary (SZÉPLIGETI 1896 to 1903). These contributions and other sources served for the compilation of the braconid (and all other wasp) species for the Hymenoptera chapter in Fauna Regni Hungáriáé. The chapter was prepared by MOCSÁRY (1897) most certainly with SZÉPLIGETI's collaboration. This compilation is considered as the first checklist of Hungarian braconids (and other wasps, too). During the first three decades of the 20th century E. ZlLAHl-KlSS (1873-1931) studied the braconids and ichneumonids of Transylvania. His papers were restricted to this part of historical Hungary (since 1920 Romania) (ZlLAHI-KlSS 1915, 1927). Between the two World Wars, up to the 1960s, J. GYŐRFI (1905-1966) enriched our knowledge of the braconids (and other parasitoid wasps) of Hungary. He was a forest engineer interested in entomology, so his most significant publications cover ecology and ethology of the parasitoid wasps within the field of applied entomology (GYŐRFI 1940 to 1959). SZÉPLIGETI's, ZlLAHI-KlSS's and GYŐRFI'

s braconid (and other hymenopterous) collections were donated by themselves (GYŐRFI'

s one partly) to the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest. This wasp material was united with the stock collection of the museum, so these gifted collections are not curated independently. Since the 1950s up to the end of the 20th century, a great impetus was given to the extensive faunistic knowledge of Hungary by the projects of exploring the national parks and nature reserves of Hungary. By realising these programmes, the composition of our braconid fauna crystallized profoundly rendering the possibility of the present compilation of the first national checklist of the braconid wasps. In Europe the present braconid checklist is in line the seventh one representing national faunas. The first six are as follows: (1) Checklist of the Hymenoptera of Britain including Braconidae (FlTTON et al. 1978); (2) Enumeration of the braconids of the former Czechoslovakia (CAPEK & LUKAS 1989); (3) Checklist of the braconids of Italy (BERGAMASCO et al. 1995); (4) Checklist of Ichneumonoidea (Braconidae + small ichneumonid families) of Poland (HUFLEJT 1997); (5) A catalogue of the Irish Braconidae (O'CONNOR, NASH & VAN ACHTERBERG 1999) (6) Check list of the braconids of Germany (BELOKOBYLSKIJ et al. 2003). It is of speculative interest to cite the numbers of the braconid species recorded in