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§ The smallest category of a zoocoenosis: the catena | 85
(“Es handelt sich also ein Schema von »Kann« Beziehungen und nicht von
»Ist« Beziehungen”, see Schwenke, 1953: 153) from which the study of
interactions can only be of limited guidance.
Balogh’s (1953: 22) interpretation is totally different; under this term he
means “stands that do not have the characteristics of a hierarchical layer, and
are sharply different smaller units”. In the lights of his examples, Balogh’s
connex is identical with Friederichs’s faunula, Tischler’s choriocoenosis, and
Schwenke’s merocoenosis. Balogh’s connex also differs from Friederichs’s
nomenclature because the former has double meaning, including not only a
biocoenosis, but also the space that it occupies (the animal world of a group
of trees or, a few bushes on a meadow, a heap of stones, a rock, a fallen, rotting
tree, tree trunk or a carcass, a pile of dung). It seems to have some relationship
with our concept of oecus. From our perspective, however, the listed entities
are not “entirely foreign elements” or “disorganised spaced inclusions” within
habitat levels, but its natural constituent parts (Park, in Allee et al., 1949:485).
Further, we do not dare to claim that “they are present in the respective
zoocoenoses only for a very short time”; instead, we think that they are
constantly there, but are strictly bound to their respective oecus, or as with
necrophagous organisms, concentrate on appropriate food source. These
examples only prove that a biotope is indeed composed of oecuses, and that
the macrobiocoenosis is a combination of microbiocoenoses.
The basic mistake of connex frameworks is that they relate in terms of
species, thus their graphical representation becomes a labyrinthine set of
arrows. Yet, if they were considered using populations, it would be obvious
that a part of a population can only be at one place at one time, and that the
independence and real existence of the simplest categories of animal
associations is not influenced by the activity of other populations of the same
species in other catenae.
§ THE FORMATION OF A CATENARIUM, A CHAIN OF CATENAE
How is a larger unit of animal associations born from the coming together
of catenae?
The appearance of such a larger category can be observed repeatedly, even
where crop rotation creates new conditions year by year but, also, where a
stand remains for a longer time. The sown poppy is sought out by corrumpent
elements that specialise on this plant and, in their wake, the relevant obstant
elements also appear; as the catenae gradually develop, a society of catenae
will also be formed that can be easily distinguished from the fauna of the
neighbouring wheat field. The early spring-active Stenocarus ruficornis
(fuliginosus) and Ceutorhynchus (Ceutorrhynchus) denticulatus, the adults of
which are active on the above-ground plant parts, and whose larvae go for
the roots, will soon be followed by the stem-living Timaspiditena papaveria,