Zur Orthopterenfauna des Neusiedlersee-Gebietes und angrenzender Teile Niederösterreichs: Funde aus dreieinhalb Jahrzehnten (Orthoptera)

As part of a zoological field course offered by the Zoological Research Institute and Museum Alexander Koenig (ZFMK), Bonn, and the University of Bonn, 33 14-day zoological excursions to the Neusiedler See region were conducted from1982 to 2018. Each course had one focus on Orthoptera and therefore took place in late summer or autumn. Various landscape types have been visited as the saline lakes in the Seewinkel, dry grassland and shrub vegetation in the Leitha Mountains and the westernmost foothills of the Small Carpathians, and the floodplain forest of the lower Morava river. As contrast to the Pannonian fauna a yearly one-day trip was organized to the neighbouring Schneeberg mountain range with its alpine-dominated faunal composition. Based on roughly 3000 voucher specimens deposited in ZFMK‘s Orthoptera collection, as well as on the annual written excursion reports, 76 species (plus Mantis religiosa) were recorded, five of these were restricted to the Schneeberg area. The other 71 species reported from the Neusiedler See basin and the other areas of the Pannonian plain represent 79 % of the species recorded by Zuna-Kratky et al. (2017) for „Eastern Austria“. From the resulting annual faunistic data per species and per site, we derive statements on the steadiness of the respective occurrences over the four decades divided into semidecades. About half of the species (39) have been found in all semi-decades, six in only one; of these, three are single records. The species found in only one or two semi-decades are discussed separately. The faunistic exploration of the orthopteran fauna of the study area since the beginning of the 20th century is summarized in a table.