O. Merkl szerk.: Folia Entomologica Hungarica 69. (Budapest, 2008)

MATERIALS AND METHODS Collection - Adult flies were netted in five sites on the surface of dung (several pieces each), mostly by covering them with a sweeping net. This enabled us to capture the vast majority of imagines, including those that did not fly readily, but were crawling up on the net. Samples were selected and representatives of each species were minuten-pinned under a stereomicroscope at the field sites. The main purpose of this effort was to obtain specimens for our museum collection and, therefore, not all individuals have been selected for pinning. All collected specimens were considered in the case of scarce species (one or a few individuals), while the more abundant species are each represented by several number of specimens. This field-based selection method enabled us to collect the vast majority, or perhaps all, of the fly species occurring on the dung pats. Identification - The field-selected proportion of the sample was moved into the Diptera Collection of the Department of Zoology, Hungarian Natural History Museum (HNHM), Budapest. These specimens, a total of 515 flies from elephant dung, and 632 flies from cattle dung represent all species collected in the field. They were mounted and labelled (double-mounted; prepared on minuten-pins, and fixed in cards of 12 x 5 mm on a collection pins) before identification. The main sources of identification keys were NORRBOM & KIM (1987), OZEROV (2005), SMITH (1969) and ZIELKE (1971), with approximately 25 further works also consulted (not listed here). The identification procedure was supported by the HNHM collection as a material for comparison, especially in the case of sphaerocerids and muscids. Some species were only identified at generic level. It should be emphasized that they are not so-called 'morphospecies', but appear to be separate biological species on the base of male genitalia and other characters. I have either refrained from naming them, or they are species new to science. All representatives of the four most abundant families (Hybotidae, Sepsidae, Sphaeroceridae and Muscidae) were taken into consideration. Apart from them, only a few sciarids and phorids were captured, however, they were omitted from the present study. RESULTS Identifications results are summarised in Table 1. As mentioned above, the numbers indicate only the number of imagines collected as museum specimens. In case of abundant species, the number of captured individuals was higher by several magnitudes. Some species that were present in our cattle samples but absent from our elephant sample are known to occur on elephant dung according to literature sources. These are marked with an 'L' in the Table.