Recent environmental and land use changes have made wildfires more frequent in natural habitats of the Kiskunság Sand Ridge on the Hungarian Plain. In a study initiated 2.5 years after an extensive fire that destroyed half of the area of a sand grassland -juniper, poplar forest steppe habitat, we assessed the effects of fire on two generalist arthropod groups: spiders and carabid beetles, as well as on the vegetation. Utilizing the natural experiment situation, samples were taken by pitfalls and suction sampling during a 1.5 years period in four 1 ha blocks, two of which were on the burnt part of the habitat, and two in the unburnt control. At the time of the investigation, in the burnt area the vegetation in the grass layer showed a quick but not complete recovery, while the canopy layer of the juniper bushes burnt down with no sign of regeneration. Carabid beetles and spiders showed differences in recovery after fire. In the carabid assemblages of the burnt parts -compared to the unburnt control -there were over three times more beetles, out of which significantly more represented the macropterous life form and granivorous feeding strategy. There was a higher ratio of pioneer species and a simplified assemblage structure in the burnt area, which meant that the conservation value of the carabid assemblage became lower there. In contrast, for the spider assemblage quantitative changes in abundance and species numbers were not significant, and the differences in species composition did not lead to a decrease in conservation value. Spider species in the burnt plots could not be described as pioneer species, rather they had ecological characteristics that suited the changed vegetation structure. Comparing the two groups, to repopulate the burnt areas, dispersal abilities proved to be more limiting for carabids. However, in both groups a strong assemblage level adaptation could be observed to the postfire conditions. In spiders, species with a stratum preference for the grass layer prevailed, while in carabids individuals with granivore strategy gained dominance. Thus, despite the differences in their speed, basically both assemblages tracked vegetation changes. The effect of future fires will depend on their scale, as well as land-use practices, such as grazing, that interact with fire frequency and recovery. If extensive fires in the future permanently change the vegetation, then it would also lead to a fundamental change in the arthropod fauna.

Fehérvári et al.: Modeling habitat selection of the red-footed falcon (Falco vespertinus)-59 - Abstract. Due to a severe population decline and shrinkage of distribution range in the past decades, the red-footed falcon has gained top priority in both worldwide and Hungarian nature conservation. As a facultative colonial breeder, in Hungary, this species predominantly nests in rookeries. The number of rooks (Corvus frugilegus) has also dramatically fallen recently, but population decline did not affect the large scale breeding distribution of this species. In our study we analyzed the presence of red-footed falcons at a colony in the case of current and historical breeding ranges based on landscape scaled habitat variables. We used a potential colony home-range size, estimated from observed home-range sizes in order to determine the scale of influential habitat variables. According to our results, the primary cause of the observed range shift is the urbanization of rooks in definable regions of Hungary. The ratio of forests and open water surfaces within the potential home-range had negative, while the ratio of grasslands had a positive effect on the probability of red-footed falcon presence. None of our models predicted red-footed falcon presence at colonies outside the current breeding range, suggesting that a probable increase in redfooted falcon population numbers will not be accompanied by the expansion of the current breeding range.

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Wild bees are important contributors to the pollination ecosystem service, but they are especially vulnerable to agricultural intensification which causes the loss and fragmentation of natural habitats. We monitored bumblebee populations (Bombus spp.) in 14 grassland patches incorporated into the agricultural habitat mosaic in the Mezőföld region, Hungary. We asked how bumblebee populations were affected by local vegetation quality and the presence of various landscape elements, including fields in agri-environmental schemes, at various spatial scales. A stratified analysis revealed that vegetation quality, especially the lack of weeds, was the most important local factor that positively affected both bumblebee abundance and species number. We found no significant landscape scale effects between 50-250 m. Between 500-1000 m grassland area in the landscape had consistently significant positive effect on species richness. At the 2 km scale the extent of arable fields had a negative impact on both abundance and richness. A higher percentage area of arable fields in the landscape participating in agri-environmental schemes had no positive effect on bumblebee abundance or species richness. Considering all local and landscape effects and their possible interactions, model selection and variance partitioning revealed that local factors were the most important determinants of bumblebee richness and abundance. Local and landscape factors had high shared variance but did not interact with each other. The present study indicated that small scale landscape composition had the lowest importance, but larger scale landscape composition was significant, most likely because bumblebees can forage far from their nests. If we are able to provide good quality grassland patches incorporated into the agricultural habitat mosaic, then we can build on the strong spill over propensity of bumblebees and can expect their contribution to the pollination of various crops.Key words: Bombus, pollination, landscape complexity, grassland, agri-environmental scheme INTRODUCTIONFrom the second part of the 20th century, the intensification of agricultural production became higher than ever before. The intensive agricultural * This paper is dedicated to Prof. László Papp, in honor of his 70th birthday and his outstanding contribution to the fields of dipteran taxonomy and ecology.Acta Zool. Acad. Sci. Hung. 62, 2016 388 SÁROSPATAKI, M., BAKOS, R., HORVÁTH, A., NEIDERT, D., HORVÁTH, V. et al. management resulted in general biodiversity decline in Europe (de Heer et al. 2005), leading to a decrease in the level of ecosystem services including pollination (Murray et al. 2009). The landscape change and fragmentation of habitats through agricultural intensification created structurally poor landscapes (Tilman et al. 2001), and these affected the diversity and abundance of pollinators, especially wild bees (Biesmeijer et al. 2006, Goulson et al. 2010, Kremen et al. 2002, Potts et al. 2010.Pollination is an important ecosystem service, provided prima...

This paper presents the methodology and results of a vegetation reconstruction method based on botanical sampling, the knowledge of succession pattern, digital photograph-interpretation and automatic delineation via image segmentation. The aim is to provide a methodology for interpretation of archived black-and-white aerial photographs, which can be applied at other study sites. Our study area was the Nyíres-tó mire in the Bereg Plain (NE Hungary). Initially, botanical sampling was carried out, and this was followed by separation and identification of current vegetation types. In our study we selected automatic delineation using multi-resolution image segmentation as the method for vegetation mapping. Based on the present-day vegetation map produced and the known successional pathway of the mire, archive aerial photographs were analyzed separately in reverse chronological order to derive plant associations present at the different photograph acquisition dates. With this method we were able to make a chronological sequence of digital vegetation maps over a period of almost fifty years . The analysis of vegetation maps showed that forest cover increased steadily until 1988. After an artificial water supply was introduced (in 1986), the spread of tree-dominated associations became slower, and the relative cover of the different vegetation types reached a stable state.

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Agrobiont spider species are well adapted to arable systems, which have fairly uniform vegetation structure and pest assemblages over continent-wide areas. We wanted to study, whether agrobiont spider subassemblages and the life history of the most prominent agrobiont, Pardosa agrestis, show any regional variation within Hungary, where only modest climatic differences exist between the NW and SE parts of the country. We studied agrobiont species of spider assemblages in 27 alfalfa and 21 cereal fields with suction sampling and pitfalls. The similarity structure of these agrobiont sub-assemblages (Sørensen distance measure) was congruent with the geographic distance matrices (Eucledian distance), as tested by Mantel tests. However, if we considered sub-assemblages consisting of the non-agrobiont species, this congruency was always higher. Thus, agrobionts responded only moderately to geographical variation if we compare them to non-agrobiont species. We studied the generation numbers and the occurrence of the first adult individuals in P. agrestis; the most common agrobiont spider in Hungary. This comparison involved comparing fields along a NW – SE gradient during 6 sampling years in pairwise comparisons, where in each year a northern and a southern population was compared with a minimum distance of 126 km in between. In generation numbers there was no difference; we found two generations across Hungary. In contrast, the first occurrence of adult individuals was on average 15 days earlier in both generations in the more southern populations. Thus, it can be concluded that agrobionts show a fairly stable and relatively low magnitude response over country-sized geographical ranges