Vig Károly: Zoological Research in Western Hungary. A history (Szombathely, 2003)
138 Phylum Arthropoda SÁNDOR BOGNÁR (1952) described swarming of the codling piercer (Cydia pomonella) in the vicinity of Kőszegfalva in 1950. FRIGYES GRAESER (1942) dealt with the tabbies (Pyralidae) of the Sopron area, while RICHÁRD SZABÓ (1956) covered the blues (Lycaenidae) in the same area. FRIGYES GRAESER (1940) published a standard account of the moth and butterfly fauna of the Hanság, mentioning 224 macrolepidopterous species. New faunistic data on leaf-rollers (Tortricidae) from IMRE BALOGH (1939) included the records of a specimen from Sopron. LAJOS KOVÁCS began in the late 1940s to examine the distribution of Hungary's Macrolepidoptera. He undertook a critical revision of the literary data and accessible collections, to produce reliable locality records for all species (KOVÁCS 1953 and 1956a). These showed there were only a few data from the West Hungarian border region, most of them resulting from the collection work in the Kőszeg Hills mentioned already. Huge areas of Western and Southern Transdanubia remained almost unexplored. In the 1950s, Hungary became almost the first country in the world to establish a national light-trap network to forecast insect pests, based on a proposal by TIBOR JERMY. The first traps, set up in 1956, were run by the Plant Protection Research Institute, for instance at Sopronhorpács. 55 The traps were set up initially at plant-protection stations and later at other points, in an effort to forecast forestry pests. 56 The Forestry Scientific Institute operated two traps in Vas County, at Szombathely and Szakonyfalu. These were mainly for pest forecasting, but LAJOS KOVÁCS managed until the end of 1970 to process and record all the macrolepidopterous material caught. Similarly, he identified the material caught at the Vas County Plant Protection Station at Tanakajd over the 1959-67 period. (Light traps were also operated at Vasvár and Celldömölk.) However, processing of the entire material ceased when KOVÁCS died in 1971. Without his handwritten journals containing several hundred thousand records, knowledge of the Macroleptidoptera of the West Hungarian border region would be very patchy. About 1300, hitherto unpublished records from the three light traps mentioned appear in a standard faunistic account of the Macrolepidoptera of the West Hungarian border region by ÁKOS UHERKOVICH (1980a). The most important work so far on the macrolepidopteran fauna of the Kőszeg Hills has been done by LÁSZLÓ RÉZBÁNYÁI. He collected using Jermy-type traps at several locations in the Kőszeg Hills in 1964-6. A light trap with a normal 100watt bulb operated at Stájerházak in 1964-6 and then at Keresztkut in 1967-8, as well as at Hörmann Spring for a few months. Over the five-and-a-half years, the traps caught 34,000 macrolepidopterous specimens, many of which were previously unknown on the Hun55 KOVÁCS, L. 1957. Lepkegyűjtés fénycsapdával (Collecting Lepidoptera with a light trap). Folia entomologica hungarica (NS) 10:284-7. 56 JERMY, T. 1961. Kártevő rovarok rajzásának vizsgálata fénycsapdákkal (Examining insect-pest swarming with light traps). A növényvédelem időszerű kérdései 2:53-61; KOVÁCS, L. 1962. Zehn Jähre Lichtfallenaufnahmen in Ungarn. Annales historico-naturales Musei nationalis hungarici 54:365-75.
