Endemic and Relict Insects in the Pirin National Park, Bulgaria

About this book

As a result of global industrial pollution and urbanisation, natural habitats are degraded and homeostasis in ecosystems is disturbed. That is why biodiversity investigation and conservation are priority problems of world nature protection policy. These factors lead to the creation of protected areas in the territories with high biodiversity density and relatively low anthropogenic impact to support the conservation of plant and the animal communities.

The most sensitive to human activity is relict and endemic fauna. While the endemics are taxa with areas, limited in space, in this case within the Balkan Peninsula, the remaining relicts are ancient taxa with more or less broad recent distribution. Because the endemics and relicts (not endemics) have different importance in biogeographical studies and also because of practical reasons these taxa are presented separately in Endemic and Relict Insects in the Pirin National Park, Bulgaria. The endemics and relicts, as biodiversity components, represent the unigue character of the regional flora and fauna. Their investigation and conservation in the protected areas are very important.

While the Bulgarian flora and vertebrate fauna are relatively well investigated, the study of the invertebrate fauna (including insects) is partial and incomplete. On the other hand the greatest number of endemic and relict species and subspecies are insects. That is why the main goal of this study is to represent all known literature and field research information about endemic and relict terrestrial insects excluding parasites in the largest protected area in Bulgaria – Pirin National Park. The obtained results will show the significance of this National Park not only for the protection of the unique endemic insect fauna of Pirin Mountains, but also the importance of this area as a 'reservoir' for conservation ofthe Balkan and Bulgarian endemic and relict species and subspecies.

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