Boros István (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 4. (Budapest 1952)

Kovács, L.: The Eupithecia communities and the problems of their evolution in our swamps and reeds (Lepid.)

obviously made possible by the fact that its food plant, Linaria vulgaris, grows abundantly on the-disturbed meadows of the woods and around the Vörs Canal, too. The other Eupithecia species, ocurring in both the above places, are centaureata, absinthiata, assimilata, and vulgata. Of these centaureata, assimilata, and vulgata find their food plants and occur everywhere in Hungary. The distribution of absinthiata crudely corresponds to that of plumbeolata : it is more or less frequent in our wet regions, with only exceptional specimens found in dry biotops. Having presented the concurrences of the two places, we have to expose the differences, too. Of the species collected in Bátorliget we have not metwith the following ones in the wet part of the woods of Vors, or, generally, at the Kisbalaton : inturbata, exiguata, venosaia, selinata, and subumbrata. These can find their food plants in the whole country, in the majority of cases in very different biotops. Their numbers were very low in Bátorliget, with the exception of exiguata. Generally distributed is venosata. Though this species occurs both in dry and wet biotops, it attains greater numbers in dry places. Of exiguata, A b à f i has already stated that it occurs only in the eastern part of the counttry, and no contrary data became known ever since. Selinata is known from three localities in the country Qnly, two of which are in swampy regions, the other is in a wet valley in the hilly country around Kaposvár. We treat this species, taking into consideration the data of U r b a h n regarding its occurrence in Pomerania, as an animal of exclusively wet biotops. It can still survive in the very wet, undisturbed swamps of Bátorliget and Ócsa, though in very small numbers, but it has already disappeared from the woods of Vörs owing to draining and afforestation. Inturbata and subumbrata are represented by one inland species each ; we are unable therefore to characterize them oecologically. Of the species collected in the wet part of the woods of Vörs, no haworthiata, tripunctaria, castigata, succenturiata, millefoliata, innotata, virgaureata, and dodoneata were found in Bátorliget. Also the food plants of these species occur in most places. Only haworthiata and tripunctaria occurred in greater numbers. Haworthiata, millefoliata, and innotata occur in the whole country and they do not seem to be oecologically sensitive, according to the data at our disposal. We have not met with haworthiata in the Reservation area of Bátorliget, because its food plant, Clematis vitaiba, does not grow there, as also the data of R. S o ó testify. No final standpoint can be taken in the case of innotata, because we did not collect there either in the time of the flight of the first generation, or in that of the second. Millefoliata, on the ground of its distribution and oecological characteristics, may be found also in Bátorliget, the more so as we have caught but a few specimens of it in most localities. Of the other species only dodoneata was ever collected in greater numbers in the dry oak woods of the hills around Budapest. Hardly any other collecting locality is known, and of its occurrence in wet places only the Kisbalaton data are known. The other species are at our disposal in small numbers and but from a few places only and so we cannot describe their spread, nor give their oecological characterization. Among them, virgaureata was caught once in Debrecen, not very far from Bátorliget. We may mention also the fact that silenicolata, caught in the dry part of the woods of Vörs, occurs, with the exception of the Transdanubium, in the Swiss Alps and Bulgaria only, according to literature. Let us sum up now those more important cases in which an explanation may b

e given, concerning the differences between the two places. In one of the cases we have to deal with a species (selinata) which prefers mostly wet places, and which, though of a larger distribution formerly, is now approaching extinction. Of its resent spread, in spite of the small numbers of data, we are of the opinion that it