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Résumé

The European marmot, Marmota marmota (L.), is, at the present time, an autochtonous animal in the Swiss Alps and in High Tatra only, in all other areas, it has been set out artificially. If there are any exceptions from this rule they are scarce and, very likely, they are only hybrids between autochthonous an set-out marmots. This incites the zoologists to pay attention to the investigation of the marmot first of all in areas of its autochthonous occurrence, for one can truly say with Münch (1958) that very little is known of the bionomics of the European marmot. This is especially true of its populations living in High Tatra. In High Tatra, the marmot lives in colonies and, scarcely, as single individuals. Each society has a matriarchal organization and inhabits its own territory (fig. l) with a system of functionally different burrows, paths, and sunning boulders or sunning places in boulderless areas (fig. 3). AIso, the places where the marmots graze belong to the territory and the entire space inhabited by marmots represent their living ground defended and marked by the members of the marmot society as found in their alpine populations (Bopp 1952, 1954, Koenig 1957, Müller-Using 1954, 1956, Münch 1958, etc.). In High Tatra, the marmot colonies are distributed mosaic-like in single valleys and their number, thanks to their careful protection by the Management of the Tatra National Park, increases and fills in the losses done to them during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia during which period the number of marmots in High Tatra decreased to less than a half of their previous number (Kostron 1948, Feriancova 1955). The colonies are situated in grassy slopes above the continuous zone of dwarf pine, most frequently in elevations of l,700-2,000 meters, occasionally, they are found in the elevations up to 2,200-2,350 meters (Z. Kratochvil) and in places where the dwarf pine zone is interrupted, they descend to altitudes of l,400-l,500 meters (Somora 1954, Rosicky & Kratochvil 1955). In High Tatra, I investigated many marmot territories: in two cases, a complex investigation of their burrows and nests was carried out to study the parasites of marmots. On those occasions, l measured and mapped all burrows of one marmot territory. These investigations wre carried out on northern slopes of High Tatra, in the area of Mt. Siroka, Mt. Svistovky, and Mt. Kosiar. The territory mentioned (fig. l) was inhabited by one male, one female, and two 2-years-old youngs, the female was rearing a litter of five youngs. The burrow system of this colony consisted of a winter burrow (fig. l C) which, at the time of investigation (on 24 June,1956), was still inhabited by both 2-years-old youngs, of two summer burrows and four emergency burrows. The total length of tunnels of the winter burrow was 29 m., of the summer burrows, 12 and 9 m., respectively, and of the emergency burrows (fig 1a., b, c), 120, 130, and 150 cm., resp. each of these was situated at the base of a sunning boulder, the fourth emergency burrow (fig. lc,) was substantially a part of a winter burrow separated from the latter by a part of disused (crashed-in) tunnel. At the time of our investigations, the male inhabited one of the summer burrows (fig. 1 B, 2 B) and the female, another summer burrow (fig. l A, 2 A). AII burrows were dug close to the soil surface (fig. 2) in a depth of 30-50 cms, usually, rarely they descended down to a depth of 9O cms. In the burrow inhabited by the male, there was a nest of dry grass weighing l kg. in the burrow inhabited by the female with her litter, a nest weighing 3 kg. and in a winter burrow, a nest of an estimated weight of 10-15 kg., the bottom layers of this nest were wet already and mixed with earth. The dimensions of the nest Chamber in the winter burrow were 100 by 8O by 50 cms., in the burrow of the female : 35 by 35 cms., in the burrow of the male : 35 by 30 cms. The entrances to the burrow were 15-l8 by 16-20 cms. in diameter