A Systematic Revision of the Land Snails of the Western Ghats of India

About this book

A Systematic Revision of the Land Snails of the Western Ghats of India is the first, major systematic review of this unique and highly-threatened fauna to appear in nearly a century. With 89 full-page colour plates of snails, it breaks new ground by being the first comprehensively illustrated work on the Western Ghats land-snail fauna. Defining the Western Ghats as including the western coastline of the Indian peninsula and the lowlands and foothills surrounding the main mountain range, this revision considers a total of 337 taxa (299 species and 38 so-called ‘varieties’ belonging to 64 genera in 23 families). These taxa are mostly snails recorded from the Western Ghats (277 species and 29 ‘varieties’ belonging to 64 genera in 23 families), but also included are a few taxa that probably occur in this region, but have yet to be detected. The new publication evaluates and clarifies the nomenclature and taxonomy of these snails within a modern systematic framework, designating lectotypes and neotypes where appropriate, and for the first time provide colour images and specimen data of type material for all the Western Ghats taxa, alongside distributional data from the original literature. It also includes a comprehensive geo-referenced, index of localities for the taxa considered.

Customer Reviews