United States
£ GBP
Those of you you are already familiar with Ed Heiman's earlier work Diagnosing Cowry Species will find this new work to be a larger and greatly expanded edition of this work. Heiman takes a very interesting approach to the subject of cowrie speciation and he bases his species on a set of pre-determined conchological characteristics that he deems measurable or observable, and uses these as criteria to determine what constitutes a species, a subspecies or a form. Whether you agree or disagree with his conclusions, everyone interested in the Cypraea will want to have this book in their libraries. The summary of this book is a conclusion that there are 18 main cowrie "forms" (types) which include 189 species of Cypraea in the recent fauna as well as 83 subspecies. A Diagnostic Manual of Cowry Species, Subspecies & Forms is illustrated with over 1100 color photos of shells. While this look at these shells is certainly not from a mainstream perspective it certainly deserves to be aware of this some what radical view of looking at these shells.
