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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.
