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I. THE AIM AND POSITION OF ZOOCOENOLOGY IN THE SYSTEM OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES Zoocoenology is the study of the laws of animal assemblages. Using this definition, zoocoenology is a strictly synbiological discipline and can only consider a species if simultaneously evaluating its connections with other species (Szelényi, 1955). The close relationship between zoocoenology and autecology underpins the frequent intrusion of autecological concepts into the zoocoenological framework. This continues to occur whilst coenologists persist with the incorrect viewpoint that coenology deals with “species”. Due to this stance, faunistics also appears in a potentially confusing proximity. § FAUNA AND ZOOCOENOSIS Therefore, we must examine, firstly, the difference between fauna and zoocoenosis, because we are convinced that we frequently present a faunal list instead of a zoocoenosis. Maybe recently, instead of an area delimited by political boundaries, we produce faunal lists of one or more association, i.e. of a natural unit. The fauna is the totality of species to be found in a delimited area, while the zoocoenosis is the totality of populations that are existentially linked, at least in one direction. Faunistics, over and above taxonomic aspects, extends its horizons towards evolution and zoogeography, and refers to, for example, boreal or Mediterranean faunal elements, or relict species. Zoocoenology, exploring more deeply in a vertical direction, uncovers food chains, and by considering connections between such food chains, also extends in a horizontal direction. The fauna is always linked to a territory, often with artificially sharp boundaries (for example, the fauna of a county, or a country), and the goal of faunistics is to study the occurrence of animal species in the most detail possible. Its results are enumeration-like; publishing lists of taxonomic groups, detecting new occurrences, and establishing how many species live in the area under study, and analysing them according to their distribution. This approach is unaltered when faunistical studies, as recently seen, have synecological
