Thomas Zuna-Kratky

Ingenieurbüro für Landschaftsplanung & Landschaftspflege Thomas Zuna-Kratky

The floodplain of the rivers Danube, March/Morava and Thaya/Dyje in eastern Austria and western Slovakia harbours a great diversity of meadows, reed swamps and sedge-bed communities. However, the grasslands along the Danube have not been adequately addressed by any study up to now, and a transnational revision of the alluvial grasslands is complete...

Long-term studies on the population dynamics of grasshoppers are rare, and are even missing completely for the alpine regions of Central Europe. Here the effects of climate warming and the recent changes in land use, like abandonment of pasturing, are believed to be serious. Our study on an alpine grasshopper community over 30 years allows, for the...

We present the second edition of the checklist of alien orthopterans (Orthoptera) and mantises (Mantodea) in Austria. In total, 17 alien Orthoptera and three Mantodea species are reported, of which eight Orthoptera species are established, while nine are casual. All three mantises are casuals. In comparison to the first checklist of alien Othoptera...

Edge populations are of conservation importance because they typically suffer an elevated risk of extinction, possess low genetic variation and can be genetically distinct from core populations. Peripheral populations are generally characterized as being less abundant and more vulnerable to habitat change. In this study, we investigated the current...

Beitrag aus Natur und Umwelt im Pannonischen Raum 30, 4/2020

The oldest Orthoptera records from Vienna date back to the 17th century. Faunistic interest greatly increased during the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, and has lasted until the present. Of the 139 Orthoptera species recorded in Austria, 85 (61 %) have been documented in Vienna. Ten of these species are now considered extinct in Vienna. A fu...

Grazing was a traditional land-use in the lowlands of eastern Austria but has been almost completely abandoned during the second half of the 20th century. In the course of nature-conservation projects since the 1990s several grazing-initiatives were started in the alluvium of the Morava-river in Lower Austria, focusing on the Cnidion-floodplain mea...

Fieldwork and data collection for several new books on Orthoptera in Austria leading to the publication of “Die Heuschrecken Österreichs” in 2017 generated a large amount of information on the distribution but also on range-shifts in time. To evaluate changes in the distribution of the 139 species in Austria, we focused on data from 1.255 grid squa...

The Austrian biodiversity monitoring in agricultural areas “ÖBM Kulturlandschaft has a focus on habitat and species diversity in cultural (open) landscapes, including alpine pastures. The central goal is to determine the present status and trends of Austrian biodiversity of cultural landscapes.

880 pages benchmark volume covering in detail all 139 extant Austrian Orthoptera species and including about 200 pp. dealing with general biology and ecology of this insect group. Cover, Impressum and Contents of the book are shown in this upload

Folder (including subsription form) advertising our new book on ”The Othropetra of Austria, 880 pp in German language but including English chapter abstracts and species accounts. Will be published in November 2017.

Checklist of the Orthoptera in Austria. In Austria at present 139 indigenous or established species of Orthoptera (63 Ensifera, 76 Caelifera) occur. Seven species – all of them Caelifera – are believed to be extinct at present. Since the last publicated checklist by BERG et al. (2005) there is an increase by 13 species, partly due to recent taxono...

Habitats of the Orthoptera of Austria. Austria provides a large variety of habitats for its grasshoppers and crickets, ranging from dry steppes in the eastern lowlands up to bare rocks in the highest elevations of the Alps. In the course of our mapping project we distinguished 13 different main habitats (“Biotoptypen”), that can be differentiated i...

History of Orthoptera research in Austria. The earliest records of Orthoptera from Austria refer to Locusta migratoria and its devastating invasions, dating back to at least the year 872. Here we take the start of the “official” investigations of the grasshoppers and crickets of Austria to be the time of LINNAEUS (1758), who described 17 species t...

From the meadow to the map: Methodology of the Austrian Grasshopper recording scheme. The analysis and the graphics of this book are based on a dataset of approx. 308.000 observations of grasshoppers in Austria, collected by the “ARGE Heuschrecken Österreichs”. Most of the data was generated during specific mapping-excursions, focused on gaining as...

A total of eight species has been recorded from Austria as occasional introductions by man. These cannot establish viable populations as they do not reproduce successfully here. The most common of these species is the Egyptian Bird Grasshopper Anacridium aegyptium with a total of 50 records from 1850 to 2016. The data suggests that the majority was...

The Orthoptera of the Tyrol Tyrol is a mountainous country at the heart of the Alps, The composition of its grasshopper fauna amongst others is influenced by (1) the countries geographical position at the intersection of the western, eastern and southeastern chains of the Alps, (2) the climatic variability with a suboceanic wet climate at the nort...

Temporary water bodies and their conservational significance. Temporary ponds are important, but often neglected habitats for many endangered species. Size and hydroperiod determine the occurrence of aquatic species, e.g. mosquito larvae, large branchiopods and amphibians. Sixteen species of the so-called primeval shrimps (large branchiopods) were...

The aim of the study was to identify habitat parameters shaping richness and composition of water and reed bed bird assemblages at backwaters in the Morava-floodplains in Lower Austria. 42 water bodies were surveyed between March and June 2008. A total of 21 breeding bird species were recorded. Species richness and species composition were only wea...

This publication summarises the research on 42 endangered grasshopper-species (Ensifera, Caelifera) in northern Burgenland, gives detailed information on distribution, habitats, populations and trends and identifies important conservation measures. Distribution maps of all 86 species present in this region are presented in the Appendix.

Population trends and limiting factors of the European Kingfiher, the Little Ringed Plover and the Common Sandpiper in the Morava-Dyje flodplains This study shows population trends, distribution and limiting factors of the European Kingfiher Alcedo atthis, the Little Ringed Plover Charadrius dubius and the Common Sandpiper Actitis hypoleucos over t...

The aim of this study was an evaluation of the nature conservation status of habitats and species in the Morava-Dyje floodplain, which are protected under the EU Habitats and Birds Directives. The evaluation focuses on an assessment of the current conservation status compared to the status at the time of the initial standard data forms reported to...

This study shows that within the context of Austrian Natura 2000 sites, the uptake of agri-environmental schemes with nature conservation targets (namely “ÖPUL”) is very high for habitats which require maintenance in the Morava-Dyje area. The grasslands with high conservation value, notably the typical Alluvial meadows of Cnidion dubii, are almost...

Die Auen entlang von March und Thaya weisen einen enormen Reichtum an unterschied-lichen Augewässern auf. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurden Wasser-und Schilfvögel an 42 Augewässern im österreichischen Teil der March-Auen zwischen Hohenau a. d. March und Marchegg-Bahnhof im Zeitraum zwischen März und Juni 2008 erfasst. Insgesamt konnten 21 Brutvogelart...

The diversity, abundance and habitat of breeding raptors in the Austrian March floodplain forests, located in the border area between Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, were studied in 2008. The study area (19.7 km2) had not been explored by ornithologists until the 1990s due to the considerable flood dynamics and the subsequent limited acce...

Phaneroptera falcata was known to be widespread only in southern and central Moravia till the year 2000. During the last years, quick expansion to northern Moravia and Silesia (Moravian-Silesian region) has been observed. Based on the sequence of findings, consecutive spreading through Bohemia is also supposed. Phaneroptera nana was published from...

For the period 1995 to 2006, all reports of common ravens were recorded for the Weinviertel. In total, 27 territories were found , with a total of ten breeding records. At six other locations, single common ravens were observed during the breeding season with no indication of breeding. In most cases, pines (Pinus sp.) and rock faces were used as br...

During the winter seasons from 1991/92 to 2004/05, annual midwinter counts of birds of prey and Great Grey Shrike were carried out in the Laaer Becken, an open, agricultural area of around 250 km2. 80 km of line transects were covered each year. The densities of birds of prey varied from 10.1 to 60.9 ind/ 10 km up to the winter of 1999/2000. Therea...

Wood Sandpipers have been trapped between the years 2000 and 2003 during their au- tumn migration at Hohenau, in the north-east of Austria. Birds seem to deposit fat reserves continually throughout a small step migration across Central Europe; hence Wood Sand- pipers need a large number of stopover sites to continue migration. Fat score of the bird...

In spring and summer 1991 the authors conducted orthopterological studies on the area of the Zitzmannsdorfer Wiesen, a central area in the planned Nationalpark "Neusiedlersee - Seewinkel", and on the adjacent "Seedamm". Special attention was payed to a qualitative survey of the spectrum of species. In the whole study-area we found 30 species of loc...

Checklist of grasshoppers of Styria with short comments on their distribution and ecology (Insecta: Orthoptera) For the first time a checklist of grasshoppers of Styria is presented. It includes all species, which have been recorded in this country since 1900 and which reproduce successfully in the wild. The most important data sources for this stu...

Zuna-Kratky, T. & A. Kürthy (1999): Long-term study of birds of prey in the lower March-Thaya-valley along the Austrian-Slovakian border. Egretta 42:17-29. The lower March-Thaya-floodplain area along the Austrian-Czech-Slovakian border area comprises an area of 340 km 2 . The predominant habitat types are arable land, especially outside the dams, r...