Ladislav Roller - Attila Haris - Ábrahám Levente (szerk.): Sawflies of the Carpathian Basin, History and Current Research - Natura Somogyiensis 11. (Kaposvár, 2008)

Introduction

Natura Somogyiensis 11 1-261 Kaposvár, 2008 Sawflies of the Carpathian Basin, History and Current Research LADISLAV ROLLER and ATTILA HARIS Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences Dúbravská cesta 9, S-842 06 Bratislava, Slovakia, e-mail: uzaeroll@savba.sk H-8142 Urhida, Petőfi u. 103. Hungary, e-mail: attilaharis@yahoo.com Abstract: All published localities of sawflies in the Carpathian Basin are listed and completed with about 4,300 new faunistic records of 554 species. Pachy nematus (Larinematus) tatricus spec. nov. is described and compared to Pachynematus imperfectus (Zaddach, 1876). Twelve species are first records for the fauna of the Carpathian Basin, 35 species for Transylvania, 12 species for Subcarpathia, 16 species for Slovakia and 16 species for Hungary. Six species are deleted from the fauna of the Carpathian Basin, 4 from the Hungarian fauna and 5 from the Slovak fauna. The history of the sawfly research in the Carpathian Basin is discussed and the nature conservation status of the rarest species is evaluated. 782 species are listed from the Carpathian Basin. Key words: Carpathian Basin, Hymenoptera, Symphyta, Pachynematus tatricus spec, nov, new records, faunistics Introduction The idea for the present monograph came from the roughly quarter millennium anniversary of the sawfly researches in the Carpathian Basin that started in Royal Hungary and continued in the successor countries from 1769 to the present. Since the publication of the very first records of Scopoli, our knowledge on the Symphyta fauna has been highly increased: more than 600 papers, books and monographs were published and more than 70,000 sawfly specimens have been collected in and around the Carpathian Basin. For our days, the known number of species from the firstly recorded 2 species reached nearly the 800. By this high diversity, the Carpathian Basin has the richest sawfly fauna in Europe. We intended this paper to be the organic and modern continuation of the "Fauna Regni Hungáriáé" and also "A check-list of Symphyta from Carpathian Basin". Our goal is to list all the sawfly species of this region, publish all available distribution data from the articles, provide new data on the occurence of species by elaborating of the different museum collections, complete the nature conservation evaluation of the rare species and outline the history of the Symphyta research from the very beginning until now. We hope that this book will be a useful source of data for future faunistic and ecological research on Symphyta of Europe and the Carpathian Basin.