The Reptiles of the Western Palearctic 1

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This book shows a comprehensive picture of the reptiles, excluding snakes, living in Europe, North Africa, Middle and Near East and Central Asia.

The bulk of the book is an annotated checklist and a distributional atlas of approx 500 species of lizards, crocodiles, turtles and terrapins, and amphisbaenians, living in the Western Palearctic.

Information on distribution, subspecies, chorotype and main references are provided for each species, as well as 226 colour maps showing the global distribution of the species on a grid of one degree. For each species map the bibliographic and original sources (more than 850 sources are listed) are indicated.

A further 83 maps show the distribution of all genera and main species groups of Palearctic reptiles.

Beside the checklist and the atlas, in some additional chapters the following arguments are treated:

Materials and methods; status of knowledge on the Palearctic fauna; composition of the Western Palearctic reptile fauna (including a statement on biodiversity and species richness); descriptive biogeography (including a discussion on the Palearctic region boundaries based on reptile distribution and the herpeto-geographic sectors of the Western Palearctic); conservation status.

A list of more than 730 references quoted in the text and high quality colour plates including photos of the most of the supraspecific taxa living in the study area completes the book.