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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.
