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34 | II. Biocoenosis and zoocoenosis (1930: 30) for cases of the biocoenological context where the term denotes a plant and its associated phytophagous organisms. To avoid an excessive complication of terminology, Janos Balogh (1946) also suggests the provisional use of association; in addition, he thinks it is even permissible to use “association” for higher categories of plant sociology and continued the development of the zoocoenological terminology in this direction (Balogh, 1953). We, however, in agreement with several other authors (Hesse, 1924; Palmgren, 1928; Krogerus, 1932; Dudich, 1939; Lindberg, 1944, Schwenke, 1953), cannot accept this suggestion; they judge that this term ought to be reserved for use by plant sociology, and the first two authors, and especially Dudich, provide weighty arguments of general validity against a hasty synthesis. We also see substantial differences between plant and animal associations; above all, the difference in structure is very noticeable. The [plant] association, homogeneous from the point of view of nutritional biology, with its relatively constant composition and biomass can hardly be compared to the zoocoenosis, which includes semaphoronts of very different life histories, biology, and which undergoes continuous modification. The heterotroph animal world can utilise the organic material provided by the plants through a wide range of adaptations. These life forms extend from the scale insects, spending most of their life anchored to a single location, to the birds of high vagility - an astonishingly variable spectrum. This is sufficient for us to resist the suggestion that the plant societies can be mimicked by that of animals and, thus, to resist the application of the term association to zoocoenology. All members of a plant association perform a substantially identical function. There is a smaller difference between a geophyte and a phanerophyte than, for example, the larval vs. adult stage of the same individual insect. Animal associations are formed by performing task-adapted activities to use the energy produced by plants. This process is not substantiallydifferent from that of the plants, as the absorption, transport and assimilation of nutrient via plant roots is not too dissimilar to ingestion of nutrients by animals by sucking, chewing, or by other means. However, these characteristic animal activities, that precede food processing, are a core feature of both animal associations and their constituent populations, and are manifested as an antagonistic relationship between associations of plants and animals. This antagonism is what underpins the formation and sustenance of animal associations, as well as their clear separation from plant associations. The animal assemblages cannot be identical across comparable plant associations; their only common characteristic is that, in both, certain species combinations are regularly repeated, so much so that we can assume that they are not in coexistence through chance. However, an individual plant (not the species), during its ontogenetic development, cannot visit various associations, as is commonplace among animals and, indeed, essential for some species. The plant association, beyond representing a sociological unit,
