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14 | 1. The aim and position of zoocoenology in the system of biological sciences
overtones and are focused towards a physiognomically uniform area (a
swamp, a grassland, forest, etc.).
The zoocoenosis, instead, represents internal links, difficult to delimit by
area, and only relating to an area because it must link to some point in the
biosphere. The base unit of faunistics is the species, while that of zoocoenology
is the population Dudich, 1932; Park, 1949; Allee et al., 1949; Balogh, 1953;
Glen, 1954; Giljarov, 1954). In practice, both work with individuals, thus
they meet at the representation of the individuum, the semaphoront.
The semaphoront (Hennig, 1950) is a concept that is narrower than the
individuum, and serves to indicate the changes (i.e. life stages) of the
individuum. The semaphoront is the smallest element of any biological
system. The individuum itself is in constant change, therefore when it is
studied at a given time; it only represents a state, different from the previous
one, and will change again later. The captured or observed “individuum” is
thus a representation of a part of an individual life (morphological, ecological,
ethological, etc.) - this is the semaphoront. The totality of semaphoronts
provides the full picture of an individuum, and through this, of the population
and concomitantly, of the species. Faunistics places the semaphoront into a
taxonomic category, the zoocoenology into a role which it fulfils in the
community.
Consequently, we are carrying out faunistics even when following exact
methods in our sampling, if the identified material is only grouped by
quantitative characteristics, even if this material was collected from an area
with sharp physiognomic boundaries. The results obtained will hardly be
more than a fragmentary picture of the fauna of the area; the fewer faunal
samples gathered, and the more that are collected from only one developmental
stage, for example the adults, the more fragmentary the results will be. If our
analysis relies on only a single sampling, the result is no more than the picture
of one aspect of the coenosis, representing solely the fauna (Kontkanen, 1937).
Faunistic research can concentrate on a single group. No objection can be
raised against this, but what we referred to in connection with the total fauna
is even more valid for “coenological” studies carried out on a single taxonomic
group. If we represent the totality of the zoocoenosis with a circle, in which
the constituent taxonomic groups are represented by smaller or bigger slices,
then removing one of these will cut all the links that connects the studied
group to the others. The zoocoenosis is not composed of taxonomic groups,
but structural elements that make the coenosis a whole. Such studies,
nonetheless, can have coenological aspects. If material collected from an area
by exact methods is subjected to a standard coenological analysis, studies
that reveal repeatedly occurring species combinations, and their quantitative
characteristics, can indicate directions for further zoocoenological research.
It is also the case, though, that such studies can only generate uncertainties
and confusion; we are not able to see far into the complicated labyrinth of
the biocoenosis.