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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,
