Vegetation and Fauna of Tisza River Basin I.
László Gallé (ed.): Vegetation and Fauna of Tisza River Basin I., Tiscia Monograph Series 7., Szeged, Hungary. 2005
Published by the Tisza Research Group by
the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the University of Szeged
Depatment of Ecology, University of Szeged, POB 51, H-6201,
Szeged, Hungary
Foreword
The official Tisza research started fifty years ago, with the financial support by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In that time, in the ecology and in the other branches of field biology the main emphasis was on habitat level studies of plant and animal communities, while the biotics, i.e. the inventory of flora and fauna was out of fashion. It was a bright idea by academician Gábor Kolosváry, the founder and the first leader of the Tisza Research Committee, to bridge ecological, biosociological, floristical, faunistical and biogeographical researches on landscape and regional level for the study of Tisza River. During the last decades, the majority of ecologists have recognized the necessity to enlarge the scaling levels of their studies to landscape and regional level, in order to understand better what happens in the ecological scene. The prominent example of this new scaling is the birth of such disciplines as the metapopulation, metacommunity and landscape ecology. Recently, the importance of flora and fauna studies has been reevaluated and restated, too, as a consequence of the recognition of biodiversity crisis.
The environmental catastrophe of Tisza caused by the heavy cyanide pollution in 2000 drew the scientific and public attention to the river. The ecological and conservational importance of Tisza River, however, is not only hydrobiological and hydrological. The terrestrial habitats of the flood plains along the river are at least as important as the water body itself. The river control, the disappearing natural habitats, a certain way of forestry, which promote the spread of invasive species are all threatening factors for the biodiversity. To be able to manage these problems, it is an urgent necessity to have as much information on the wildlife of Tisza River as it is possible. The scientific literature on Tisza biota is extensive, there are more than one thousand papers, thirty-two volumes of the journal Tiscia, as well as six already published volumes of Tiscia Monograph Series dealing with different topics of the biology of the river. The synthesis is, however, yet missing, though, it was an intention of the founders and leaders of the scientific Tisza research to publish a Tisza monograph already decades ago. The very first attempt was the establishment of Tiscia Monograph Series, a supplement of the ecological journal Tiscia. Results of expeditions and symposia papers have been published in the first six volumes of the series so far. With the present volume, we start a new series of Tisza monographs entitled “Vegetation and Fauna of Tisza River Basin”. This first volume contains seven chapters on the distribution of different invertebrate groups. The next one to be published will be on the vegetation of Tisza Valley and then more faunistical volumes are expected. We plan to focus also on ecological issues of Tisza River later, in a subsequent series of volumes.
This volume represents a part of the scientific goals of the Tisza Research Group run by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the University of Szeged. The publication of this volume is supported by the Hungarian Academy of Scienes with the contribution of the Department of Ecology, University of Szeged.
We hope that this book and the forthcoming ones will contribute to a better biological knowledge of Tisza River and, in this way they will serve the success of the conservation of this important and unique region.
Szeged, November 2005
László Gallé
Tisza Research Group by the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the
University of Szeged
Contents
Foreword
Earthworms (Annelida: Polychaeta and
Oligochaeta) of the River Tisza and its tributaries
András Szitó
The aquatic Mollusk fauna of River Tisza and
its tributaries
Károly Bába, Tamás Domokos and Andrei Sárkány-Kiss
Aquatic beetle fauna of the Tisza region (Coleoptera:
Hydradephaga, Hydrophiloidea, Byrrhoidea in part and Hydraenidae)
Zoltán Csabai
Rove beetles (Coleoptera:
Staphylinidae) of Tisza Valley
Dávid Fülöp
Ant fauna of Tisza River Basin (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)
Lászó Gallé, Bálint Markó, Klára Kiss, Éva Kovács, Hajnalka
Dürgő, Katalin Kővár and Sándor Csősz