Vig Károly: Zoological Research in Western Hungary. A history (Szombathely, 2003)
70 Phylum Mollusca Hungary. However, WAGNER unfortunately neglected to give accurate collecting locations, so that his data can hardly be used for later revisions. Nor can the voucher specimens from his collections be found, so that the identity of species he mentioned cannot be confirmed. 5 Several of his later publications also gave data on the region (WAGNER 1930b, 1943 and 1944). A vast Mollusc Fauna of the Carpathian Basin monograph was published by LAJOS SOÓS (1943), in which known locations in the West Hungarian border region are included. A milestone in Hungarian research into mollusc fauna came with the appearance of the study 'Distribution of Recent Mollusca in Hungary' (PINTÉR et al. 1979) and later additions to it (PINTÉR and SZIGETHY 1979 and 1980). The authors covered the whole country, so that the collecting locations in the West Hungarian border region also appear. A similar study appeared in 1983 on the distribution of slugs in Hungary. Eight of the 22 species of slug present in Hungary are found in region. One notable piece of data is the single Hungarian occurrence of Deroceras lothari (WIKTOR and SZIGETHY 1983). ENDRE KROLOPP and ANDRÁS VARGA (1990) summarized the malacological work in the West Hungarian border region, researching the literary data on recent mollusc fauna and the malacological material from the region in public collections. They then collated the two and concluded that 152 species of mollusc are known in the region, of which six species (Arion lusitanicus, Cochlodina fimbriata, Deroceras lothari, Macrogastra densestriata, Pagodulina pagodula and Pseudofusulus variáns) are known only from there. Data on the West Hungarian border region also appear in communications about mollusc fauna in other regions of Transdanubia (KOVÁCS 1974; PINTÉR 1957 and 1981) and in other faunistic studies (MODELL 1924; ROTARIDES 1948; AGÓCSY and Pócs 1960; VÁSÁRHELYI 1961a; PINTÉR 1962 and 1975; KROLOPP 1980; FÜRJES 1985). The freshwater-snail materials from the sampling locations of the National Environmental Protection network were processed by ANDRÁS VARGA and BÉLA CSÁNYI. The sampling locations covered some 38 watercourses in the country with about 160 sampling sites. Those sampled included the rivers Rába, Gyöngyös and Repce. Outstanding findings included Theodoxus transversalis in the Rába at Molnaszecsôd, Rábahídvég, Rum and Sárvár, and Fagotia acicularis at Hövely in the Kapuvár district on the Repce (VARGA and CSÁNYI 1997). Occurrence data for shellfish collected in Hungarian watercourses have been given by ANDRÁS VARGA et al. (1999). Their study covered Rába collections at Rábahídvég, Rum, Sárvár and Ostffyasszonyfa, which showed the occurrence of Unio crassus, U. pictorum, U. tumidus, Anodonta cygnaea, A. anatina, Sphaerium corneum and Pisidium nitidum. The occurrences of U. crassus in several Western Hungarian watercourses (the Kerca, Kerka, Szentgyörgyvölgy Brook and River Zala) were published by TIBOR KOVÁCS and ANDRÁS AMBRUS 5 JÁNOS WAGNER was on the staff of the Hungarian Natural History Museum in Budapest, whose collections he augmented. During this period, he would only add an occasional, especially interesting specimen to his private collection. The mollusc collection of the museum was destroyed in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and nobody knows what happened to WAGNER'S private collection.
