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§ The concept of biotope | 65
Among the formation groups, the primary interest of agrozoocoenology
is the arvideserta, which can be identified as all cultivated forbs and herbs.
There are, however, trees among our cultivated plants, whose zoocoenoses
are fundamentally different from those in the former, because they support
animals colonising from herbosa and deserta formations; zoocoenoses
inhabiting the cultivated tree stands (orchards) are related to lignosa
formations. For this reason, it seems unavoidable to give these biotopes a
different name and, without doubting the taxonomic logic of plant sociology,
we will call these “agrilignosa”. Therefore, the agrilignosa is not a separate
category of plant sociology, but a cultural biotope whose zoocoenosis should
be distinguished from the arvideserta, due to its different life conditions and
energy sources.
In the above-mentioned biotopes, the zoocoenoses will be characteristically
dissimilar due to the multitude of differences provided by the biotopes
themselves; originally, under conditions undisturbed by humans’, they will
have had a distribution other than that of the present day. Suffice to say that
the ancient biotopes are held back from returning by the arvideserta, because
humans, by regulating rivers and maintaining dykes prevent the original
emersiherbosa from replacing the cultivated land, or make the return of the
original euriherbosa impossible through agricultural cultivation. The
originally extensive forests of the Carpathian Basin have gradually been
restricted and, today, only the highest crests are covered by continuous forest,
andmost of those are managed by forestry. Today, the cutting down of forest
is unimaginable without a subsequent replanting of forest trees that hastens
the return of the climax stage, and almost totally prevents the natural process
of succession. Today, the place of the forests that were exterminated in
lowlands and hills is now occupied by arvideserta and agrilignosa. Also, we
can assume that the dry grasslands covering the slopes of calcareous mountains,
so characteristic today, have been created because of human influence: the
cutting of the forest, and the appearance of karst after grazing created space
for rupideserta. Also, it is to be noted that the replanting often introduces
trees foreign to those biotopes. For example, the Pinus nigra plantations in
the forests of the Danube Bend were not planted along with the characteristic
plant species of the Scots pine forests of the Balkans, and the ground vegetation
of the spruce plantations in the Matra and Bükk Mountains is related to the
autochthonous flora of those mountains, and not with the spruce forests of
the Carpathians.
All this shows that the biotope determines, to a certain degree even
countering human influence, the plant associations of a given space, and the
two together, naturally, explain the zoocoenosis. Only in considering this
role of the space is it understandable as to why the animal associations are
3 Even if we are far from having precise and comparative coenological data from the biotopes listed,
the existing differences can be assumed from the results of the available faunistic studies.