Alen Tatar, Dragoslava Peruničić i Vinka Vujović EN.pdf · their limitations in lasting and...

Publisher:Public Institution Natural History Museum of Montenegro

For the Publisher:Ondrej Vizi, director

Project Coordinator:Andrej Vizi

Associates in the Project:Snežana Dragićević, Lidija Polović, Marko Karaman, Ondrej Vizi, Suzana MalidžanČeda Ivanović, Snežana Vuksanović, Goran Ćulafić, Nada Bubanja, Vera Biberdžić

Ilinka Ćetković, Katarina Burzanović, Natalija Čađenović, Ivana Peruničić,Dubravka Bešić, Branka tomović, Nataša Miličković, Srđan Jovetić, Nataša Lisičić, Biljana Jovetić,

Alen Tatar, Dragoslava Peruničić i Vinka Vujović

Photography:Duško Miljanić

Slavko PolakNatural History Museum Archive

Proofreading and English Translation:Stanka Vizi

Space design:Stanislav Nikičević

Print design:Siniša Radulović

Printed by:Promotive

Circulation:

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The exhibition has been financed through the IPA Adriatic Programme of Cross Border Cooperation in scope of the project “MuseumCultour – The Adriatic’s museums enrich cultural

tourism” and with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Montenegro

MontenegeroMinistry of Culture

The project has been co-financed by the resources of European Union,

Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance

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The exhibition “Nature Connects Us“ represents the first per-manent setup of the Natural History Museum of Montenegro.

After a number of temporary exhibitions which, irrespective of their limitations in lasting and space, achieved notable results, this exhibition is a step forward in the overall work and development of the Natural History Museum, from its establishment until now.

Montenegro is known for its biological diversity, where on a small space there is a great abundance of authentic natural habitats characterised by distinctive plants and animals. At this exhibition we present several natural entities with their natural opulence. Each complex has been presented in a separate diorama, repre-senting a “clip“ from the nature of Montenegro, but also a part of the overall natural diversity of the Adriatic Region countries we be-long to. Dioramas are fully equipped and completed by the items of the Natural History Museum of Montenegro. This approach of presenting and interpreting has been used in the museums world-wide for centuries. However, on our exhibition the dioramas have been rounded by digital equipment providing for a simple access to all information about the exhibits. The concept of the space and professional texts are the fruit of work of all curators and other professional personnel of the Museum.

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NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF MONTENEGRO

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NATURE CONNECTS US

CAVE ..........................................................................................................................11HOLOGRAMS OF THE PRE-HISTORIC LIFE ON THE EXPANSES OF MONTENEGRO ...........15FOSSILS OF MONTENEGRO ............................................................................................17ADRIATIC SEA ............................................................................................................23SKADAR LAKE ............................................................................................................29INSECTARIUM – DRAGONFLIES AND BUTTERFLIES OF SKADAR LAKE .......................35GREATER SPOTTED EAGLE...........................................................................................37A SHORT MOVIE “ICONS OF SKADAR LAKE”.................................................................41FUNGI AND MOSSES ....................................................................................................43INSECTARIUM – FOREST ENTOMOFAUNA .................................................................49FORESTS......................................................................................................53HIGH MOUNTAINS ......................................................................................................59EDUTAINMENT ROOM.................................................................................................65PHOTO GALLERY ........................................................................................................67


DIORAMA

CAVE

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The caves on the territory of Montenegro are very numerous, stretching from the mountains Rumija, Lovćen and Orjen on

the south to Durmitor and Pešter on the north. Their exact number has not been established yet, but the word is about several thou-sands of speleological objects. The longest cave in Montenegro is the one above the Vražji firovi (Đalovića Cave) - the length of its so far studied channels is 17.5 kilometres.

| Grbočica Cave

Each cave has its own rhythm of life. Each of them has its own temperature, own quantity of moisture – it is either dry, or with flowing currents or formed lakes. Yet, no cave has a source of light, total darkness rules. The lack of light leads to the lack of food.

NATURE CONNECTS US

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Cave animals have adjusted their appearance to the life in the darkness. Owing to a small quantity of available food they have small dimensions, their metabolism is slowed down, but they live longer than their surface relatives.

The most perceptible cave animal is bat, but it is not a genuine cave animal. The caves are only winter shelters and places where bats breed their young, but they look for food out of them.

Genuine cave animals are those that cannot survive outside the cave. They have adjusted their appearance to living in the darkness. They do not need to camouflage by colour, or to protect them-selves from the sun by dye, and for that reason they are mainly

| Cave centipede Brachydesmus sp.

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white. Most of them lost their eyes, but they have developed oth-er senses by which they detect every motion in the vicinity, mo-tion of either prey or enemy. Some of these animals are tiny crabs, crickets, spiders, mowers, insects, beetles, centipedes. You may see some of them in the diorama, but owing to their small size (which is rarely more than 1.5 to 2.0 cm), we have represented them by the original photographs from Montenegro’s caves, on LCD display.

| Wingless insect Plusiocampa sp

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HOLOGRAMSOF PREHISTORIC LIFE ON THE

EXPANSES OF MONTENEGRO

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NATURE CONNECTS US

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Mrnogorsko Montenegro’s ground has a very complex origin. In order to understand how the prehistoric life originated

on this expanse, we need to imagine the planet Earth 400 million years ago. At that time there was only one continent on the Earth, the supercontinent called Pangea, made of all six present conti-nents. During the geological periods, the supercontinent Pangea crumbles into northern continent Laurasia and southern continent

– Gondwana, between which there emerges a new ocean, the Teth-ys, which will become the Mediterranean Sea. In time Gondwana will crumble to present southern America, Africa, Australia, India and Madagascar. From northern continent Laurasia there originate North America, Greenland, major part of Europe and Asia. At that time, part of the continent that will become the present territory of western Balkans, the Adriatic Sea and the Apennine peninsula are still in scope of southern continent – Gondwana, but it sepa-rates and collides with Europe, forming the contours of the present southern Europe, together with our territory.

Therefore, observed from the standpoint of geology and develop-ment of prehistoric life, the expanse of Montenegro has originated on the collision of the two continental masses. The oldest parts of the ground in Montenegro are situated in the surrounding of the towns Bijelo Polje, Pljevlja and Berane.

Which prehistoric beings settled these expanses? The remains of big mammals: mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, prehistoric deer, cave bear, sabre-toothed tiger and giant rhinoceros have been found.

The holograms in scope of the exhibition present a kind of “over-ture“ to the fossils exhibition. Using the game of light, holograms bring the three-dimensional image of land and oceans develop-ment, emergence of life in the sea and its proceeding to land, and they portray the most interesting prehistoric animals.

* Hologram is a three-dimensional image formed by interference of coherent light


FOSSILSOF MONTENEGRO

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T his room consists of a selection of paleontological findings in Montenegro. Find out what the fossils are, when they were

formed and get to know their attractive stories from the time when the Earth was young: the sea was shallow and hot, continents dif-ferently distributed; giant and amazing organisms settled prehis-toric landscapes… and then, a cataclysm took place. Perhaps we will never know what the dreadful force wiped out three fourths of the life on the planet 65 million years ago. Are we also threatened by the same danger?

| Fossil room

* Fossils (from Lat. fossus – unearthed) are the material remains and traces of animals, plants and other orgnisms that lived during the past of earth.

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The largest number of fossils recorded in Montenegro belongs to sea invertebrates indicating that our soil had once been the sea bottom. The fossils of prehistoric plants, which once created mighty gallery forests in the north are nowadays witnessed by coal deposits. Mammoths, cave bears, prehistoric deer with 4m span antlers and colossal Indricotherium, the biggest terrestrial mam-mal that ever existed, once wandered on our expanses. Fossil re-mains of these animals in Montenegro are rare, and some of them are in front of you.

| Fossil snails

| Petrified leaf

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| Cave bear's vertebra


DIORAMA

ADRIATIC SEA

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This diorama brings a fragment of marine life of the Adriatic Sea. An extraordinary complex universe, still insufficiently studied in

Montenegro, had to be presented on a small space. Serene waters of Montenegro’s part of the Adriatic still hide many mysteries: one of the interesting species you see in the diorama, the four teeth fish, has until recently been unknown as an inhabitant of our sea. This specimen is the first ever found in Montenegro. Formidable sea snake in fact is a harmless fish similar to eel, burrows in sandy bottom and it is very timid. Great amberjack and yellow tail and tuna are big fishes significant for fishing. Diorama could not ac-commodate one of the biggest Adriatic fishes – sunfish, which may weigh over two tons. In the Adriatic Sea there also are sharks, such as blue shark and much smaller cat shark. An interesting sea inhab-itant is a noble pen shell, a large shell you can see in this diorama.

| Common Dentex (Dentex dentex) is an appreciated inhabitant of the Adriatic Sea

This shell often has a sub tenant, a tiny crab called „the shell keep-er“. John Dory is an interesting fish caught in the Adriatic, but also produced in aquaculture. Sea lamprey is a parasitic fish from the order of cyclostomes. This ancient group occurred over 400 mil-lion years ago, and still represents a menace for fishes of all the seas and oceans. Indented coast and bottom of the Adriatic Sea are an extraordinary habitat for numerous plant and animal spe-cies which form underwater ecosystems. Besides, the Adriatic Sea water is clean, especially along the eastern coast: it takes less than three years to have the entire water replaced during the usual dy-namics of the Adriatic ingression. In comparison, the Black Sea wa-ter takes around 500 years to completely change!

| John Dory (Zeus faber)

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| The Bay of Kotor

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The biota of Adriatic counts over 7,000 plant and animal species. Some thirty fish species lives only in the Adriatic Sea, due to very specific karst for-mations and undersea springs of eastern littoral. Some of the rarest animals in the world live here, such as Mediterranean monk seal, bottlenose dol-phin, loggerhead sea turtle, etc.


DIORAMASKADAR LAKE

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NATURE CONNECTS US

In regards of the abundance of biodiversity, Skadar Lake is a true Montenegro’s speciality. A number of nature investigations in

Montenegro have been devoted exactly to Skadar Lake, thus no wonder that the collections of the Natural History Museum, situ-ated only 30 km away, are mainly completed by the objects from Skadar Lake. This lake has several lives: in the winter it is a calm expanse of water that never freezes, where a large number of birds spend their winter. In summer, the lake has two faces: one is stony southern coast with archipelago of karst isles occupied by birds and medieval monasteries, pebble beaches and picturesque fish-ermen villages. Another one is vast northern swamp, which actu-ally represents the biological heart of the lake and the habitat of several globally important bird species. This is why Skadar Lake was granted the biggest space at our exhibition. We decided to present one summer day in the swamps, since that is the aspect that we like the best. Several most prominent habitats of the lake are presented

| Vast floating carpets along the northern shore of Skadar Lake

in this diorama: clay banks settled by sand martins, bee-eaters and the only freshwater crab in Europe; overgrown swamp with flooded forests, inhabited by hundreds of organisms; mighty layers of peat which acts as natural “sponge“; flooded meadows which in summer turn into green pastures rugged by the stripes of willows, aider and ash and of course, floating carpets of water lilies, offering home and shelter to many birds.

Skadar Lake is the best known for Dalmatian pelican. Once upon a time, this pelican settled the areas on the west as far as British Islands. However, the border of its areal withdrew in time and stopped right here, at Skadar Lake.

Nowadays, a small colony of pelicans nests on these floating peat islets and survives in spite of all the challenges. After them, the area where they breed is called “Pančeva oka“, since common name for pelican here is “panac“. This tells us that pelicans have for a long time been known to the people on Skadar Lake.

| Pelican with young

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| Isle Grmožur

Besides its biota, the Lake is interesting also for its morphological properties: in addition to being the largest lake on Balkan Penin-sula, it has a peculiar hydrology: dozens of underwater springs fill the lake with potable water, and at one such spot the largest depth of 60 m was measured. The Lake has only one shunt, the Bojana River that connects it with the sea. Sometimes, in spring, after the snow melting in surrounding mountains, the enormous quantity of water pours into the Bojana and forces it to flow backwards. Then Bojana River infuses into the Lake, bringing the representatives of brackish flora and fauna.

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INSECTARIUMDRAGONFLIES AND BUTTERFLIES OF SKADAR LAKE

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NATURE CONNECTS US

Since the insects are the most numerous group of animals, both on this and on other types of habitats, here we give only an in-

sight of species one may find at Skadar Lake. As this is an aquatic ecosystem, we have placed the accent on dragonflies, partly because their life cycle is greatly connected with water, but also because they have been studied the best in this area. Whereas we find majority of insects on vegetation in the littoral part of Skadar Lake, we find some dragonflies flying above the pelagic, away from the littoral. Some species of butterflies, unavoidable dwellers of the Lake have also been presented, as well as some aquatic and terrestrial bugs we find on the surrounding vegetation.

| Blue eyed hawker (Aeshna affinis)

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SHOWCASE

BLACK EAGLE

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| Black eagle at Skadar Lake in 2014.

Greater spotted eagle is a rare and endangered bird threatened with extinction. It likes marshy areas and it is a regular winter

visitor of Skadar Lake. Presently, several black eagles equipped by GPS tracking devices fly throughout Europe. This kind of high tech-nology application for animal studies has been "reserved" for the most endangered species; thus researchers readily assign names to equipped animals. Eagle named Bruzda, which you can see before you, has been equipped with such device in Poland, where is one of the last breeding sites of this species. Unfortunately, his travel ended ingloriously in Montenegro, in sight of the whole or-nithological community. Thereafter he was donated to the Natural History Museum, and we did our best to have this eagle at least contribute the education on the problem of illegal hunting. More information on moving and present sojourn of other birds is avail-able on site: http://birdmap.5dvision.ee/index.php?lang=en

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A SHORT MOVIE ICONS OF SKADAR LAKE

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This movie represents a bond of old and modern experience of Skadar Lake. We have attempted to represent the lake as a

source of culture and tradition, and its biota as an overall wealth of a unique ecosystem the inseparable part of which are people. Our objective is simple: to recognize humans in their natural en-vironment, adept, hardworking and noble – such as the nature has shaped them. The materials from archive of RTCG (Radio-Tel-evision of Montenegro) and field recordings of the Natural History Museum have been used in this film..

NATURE CONNECTS US

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DIORAMAFUNGI AND MOSSES

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This diorama aims at presenting two large groups of organisms with cosmopolitan distribution - fungi and mosses. Their role in

nature is tremendous and irreplaceable; therefore, we have placed them in a special nook. Mosses and fungi are very numerous in moist environments, what forests are. This clip of deciduous-coni-fer forest from north Montenegro presents just a small portion of the abundance of species living in them. Both ones and the oth-ers settle various types of microhabitats in forest. They grow on soil, trunks and barks of the trees, on rotten boles and stumps, and mosses also grow on stones and rocks. Fungi are an essential com-ponent of various ecosystems which, by their presence, provide for development of invisible, but crucial natural processes – circula-tion of water and mineral matters. They decompose the main con-stitutive part of plant body mass, lignin and cellulose and without them the forest would readily be buried in its own waste. For their nutritive values, mushrooms are between meat and vegetables, thus we may also call them „forest meat“. Mosses substitute their small size by numerousness, by pioneer settling the substrates from which other plants ”escape”, by avoiding the erosion, and by themselves they are habitat for many tiny animals (invertebrates).

NATURE CONNECTS US

| Mosses also grow on the hardest substrates

| Models of mushrooms are in size they can reach in nature

The exhibits of fungi were made of artificial materials since they can hardly be preserved in their natural form. In order to have the differences in individual species perceived better, the dimen-sions of capital representatives were used. The species most used in Montenegro (porcini, chanterelles, parasol mushroom) are pre-sented in this diorama, as well as the most poisonous ones – death cap, fly amanita (which causes hallucinations) and Devil's bolete. Mosses are represented in form of exsiccate*. It is possible to rec-ognise in nature the majority of species contained in the diorama; some of them are rare, like sphagnum mosses, and others are pro-tected by the law, like Buxbaumia viridis (mosses do not have com-mon names

* Exsiccate is a dried (dehydrated) material

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| Buxbaumia viridis

| Cantharellus cibarius

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INSECTARIUMFOREST ENTOMOFAUNA

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Forests offer a large number of microhabitats in which tiny crea-tures, like insects, can look for their home. We can see them

flying or resting in the trees and bushes tops, on the leaves and flowers of herbaceous vegetation, but also in tree hollows, under living or rotten trees, on the stumps, etc. Some of the most attrac-tive beetles have been presented, like stag beetle, rhinoceros bee-tle, longhorn beetles, but also some of the burliest butterflies, like giant peacock moth. In addition to moths, we have chosen some butterflies found in the forests and forest glades. You might also get to know some species of hymenoptera, true flies, grass-hop-pers and bugs.

| Arctia villica


DIORAMA

FORESTS

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Over 50% of Montenegro's entire territory is covered with forests, what makes it one of the most forested European countries.

Montenegro can also boast for having a virgin forest Biogradska gora, which is one of the three remaining virgin forests in Europe.

Forests are a very rich and complex ecosystem, predominated by woody plants, but exactly the specific relations of coexistence of trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants, mosses, fungi, lichens, insects, birds, mammals, then also microorganisms, are those factors that make this ecosystem different from the others. We may differ sev-eral types of forest communities, from sub Mediterranean hard leaved evergreen forests, over the deciduous and mixed ones (pre-dominating in the continental part) to the stripe of spruce and fir trees we find on higher altitudes. We have chosen to present a frag-

ment from a mixed forest.

| The Biogradska River flows through the similar virgin forest

| Capercaillie (Tetrao urogallus)

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The emphasis has been put on our biggest mammals - bear, wolf, fox, roe deer, but also on some smaller ones like badger and mar-ten, because they are the ones we expect to see in forest. These animals are mainly territorial and their survival in nature requires large space, primarily for nutrition. Forests are inhabited by a large number of birds, from predators such as sparrow hawk and tawny owl to also numerous songbirds which are not easily seen, but one cannot imagine the forest without their sound. In coniferous for-ests we can also find capercaillie, which is biggest representative of order Galliformes.

| Oak forest on Mountain Lovćen

| Deciduous forest on Mountain Semolj

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DIORAMA

HIGH MOUNTAINS

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Montenegro is a highland country since as much as two thirds of its surface area is high mountains. The Dinaric Mountains

which dominate the relief of Montenegro in cultural and naturalist regard are one of the most interesting mountain chains in Europe. This mountain group, for its relief forms and height similar to the Alps, is known among the naturalists for the abundance of plant and animal species as well as a large number of rare and endemic ones. It is not easy to survive on the rocks, cliffs, rock creeps and high mountains plateaus.

These specific habitats above upper forest border are characterised by tough life conditions, such as very low temperatures, destruc-tive action of winds in winter or intense Sun radiation and draught in summer months. That is why the inhabitants of the highest parts of the mountains have developed a series of traits helping them to succeed in opposing the negative impacts.

NATURE CONNECTS US

| Bobotov kuk, the highest peak of Durmitor

| Silene macrantha| Drypis spinosa | Moltkia petraea

High mountain plants are low, they grow in sods or flattened over the ground, have very pubescent leaves and stems, long and thin roots, large vivid coloured rosaries... In this way they sustain wind, cold or heat, find and save precious water, attract pollinators...Some of these magnificent fighters arrived during the ice-age and found shelters on the Dinarids of Montenegro and adjacent areas. Prickly Drypis, Molt-kia, dwarf juniper and grasses in this diorama are just a small portion of high mountains flora of the maritime Dinarids.

Golden eagle is a magnifi-cent representative of high mountains animal life. This predator can fly for several hours without making any wing motion

| Golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos)

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On the mountain plateaus in the ground there lives lesser mole rat (Spalax leucodon). Its eyes are completely covered with skin and hence the local name “blind puppy”. It uses its strong teeth to dig a maze of corridors in the ground, and the dug up soil it throws with legs. To-gether with European hare it makes the main prey to predators.

On the stones and in the rocks one can frequently see nose-horned viper (Vipera ammodytes). This snake is one of the three vipers living in our regions.

| Lesser mole rat (Spalax leucodon)

| Nose-horned viper (Vipera ammodytes)

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EDUTAINMENT ROOM

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This room is designated to all those who want to learn some-thing new and test their knowledge in an amusing way. In the

era of portable computers and various gadgets, it seemed appro-priate to offer to the visitors, mostly youngest ones, specially de-signed applications on popular Android platform in form of quiz-zes, puzzles and educational games. For those who want to inves-tigate the nature via the Internet, we have provided two comput-ers for free surfing. Nevertheless, our message is that the best way to get acquainted with nature and discover it – is to get outside!

| Edutainment room is designated to educate through entertainment

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NATURE CONNECTS US

PHOTOGALLERY

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Digital photography has opened numerous possibilities for re-searchers of nature. Expensive and sensitive photographic

films have been replaced by practical memory cards which store hundreds of pictures. In this way, the records from nature research have become much more complete and precise. The field photo-graphs made by the curators of the Natural History Museum pri-marily have a documentary character, yet, among them, one can find true portraits of plants, animals and natural habitats. Enjoy the selection we have prepared.

NATURE CONNECTS US

Alen Tatar, Dragoslava Peruničić i Vinka Vujović EN.pdf · their limitations in lasting and...

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