Vig Károly: Zoological Research in Western Hungary. A history (Szombathely, 2003)

Phylum Mollusca 69 RIDES (1931). Malaco-faunistic data on the Kőszeg Hills also appear in the work of JÁNOS WAGNER (1930a) mentioned already and in shorter faunistic and taxonomic publications of his (WAGNER 1930b, 1935 and 1939). ALADÁR VISNYA began to collect molluscs in the Kőszeg Hills in the 1930s. Staff of the Zoosystematics Department of the Péter Pázmány University of Sciences in Budapest also collected while on an excursion and these specimens were identified by JÁNOS WAGNER. In a joint article, VISNYA and WAGNER (1936) identified 88 species and 14 subspecies and variants. In the autumn of 1984, Mrs H. ZEISSLER found in the collection of KÁROLY BÁBA specimens of a species new to the Hungarian fauna, Cochlicopa repentina, one specimen of which came from Szabó Hill near Kőszeg (BÁBA 1984). However, malacologists differ sharply over the validity of the species, because the description was based on indistinct morphological features. So the Kőszeg occurrence has to be treated with caution (cf. KROLOPP and VARGA 1990). LÁSZLÓ ÁDÁM, on a collecting trip to the Kőszeg Hills for one of the Natural History of Praenoricum

3 research programmes, collected the first specimens in Hungary of Pseudofusulus variáns, from piles of brushwood near the peak of írottkó (KISS and PINTÉR 1985). It had occurred to REZSŐ SZÉP in the previous century (SZÉP 1891) that some shells of Pomatias elegáns collected by FRIVALDSZKY at Bérbaltavár looked recent. In 1938, ALADÁR VISNYA managed to gather several live specimens 3 Az Alpokalja Természeti Képe. 4 ROTARIDES, M. 1948. János Wagner. Fragme there, on the wooded north slope of Szőlőhegy (Vineyard Hill), along with other species (VISNYA and WAGNER 1938; WAGNER 193 8). Nonetheless, LAJOS SOÓS in his monograph mentioned already (Soós 1943) gave Tihany as the only certain location of living specimens of the species, although he wrote in a later work, 'Living specimens are known in this country only from Tihany and Bérbaltavár' (Soós 1955-9). Even so, Bérbaltavár did not feature as a location in the study 'Distribution of Recent Mollusca in Hungary' (PINTÉR et al. 1979) either. On August 28, 1990, ANDRÁS VARGA, in company with KÁROLY BÁNKUTI and LEVENTE FÜKÖH, managed to find a location again that was undoubtedly the same as the one found by VISNYA and WAGNER. The question remains whether other isolated populations of the species exist in the region (KROLOPP and VARGA 1991). The molluscs of Ság Hill were hardly known before the collections of ENDRE KROLOPP, apart from some sporadic data. Twenty snail species were found on the hill. The paucity of the fauna can be attributed to the hot, arid microclimatic conditions and significant human interference. No upland species are known from there (KROLOPP 1981). CSABA SZINETÁR and colleagues also collected snail shells on Ság Hill while investigating shell-dwelling spiders (SZINETÁR et al. 1998). The first comprehensive fauna register of the region was compiled by JÁNOS WAGNER

4 (1930a). This recorded the distribution of 43 species in Western la faunistica hungarica 11:94-5.