L. Forró szerk.: Miscellanea Zoologica Hungarica 12. 1998 (Budapest, 1998)
Guti, G.: Sturgeons in the Hungarian section of the Danube and draft program for their artificial propagation
Book review PLEGUEZUELOS, JUAN M. (ed.) (1997): Distribución y Biogeografía de los Anfibios í Reptiles en Espana y Portugal. - Monografias de Herpetologia, Vol. 3, Universidad de Granada, Associación Herpetológica Espanola, Granada, 542 pp. This impressive volume puts the standard to a very high level as regards to a country-scale faunistic monograph on amphibians and reptiles. Spain and Portugal representing themselves as a separate biogeographical unit, the Iberian Peninsula, have an extremely rich fauna of these creepy-crawlies: 89 species of amphibians and reptiles are discussed in the present volume (including the Azores, Canaries and Balearic Islands). The number of authors contributed to the text is almost as numerous: 65, mainly Spanish and Portuguese herpetologists wrote the 17 chapters (in Spanish). The monograph is divided into five main parts. The first one, written by Juan P. Martinez-Rica, is an introduction to the mapping methodology applied throughout the book. It is the UTM 20x20 km grid system which used to plot all species distribution. In the second section, Chapter 4, is an extremely useful paper dealing with the origin and the evolutionary relationships of the Iberian herpetofauna. All groups of amphibians and reptiles (at least on the family, but sometimes even on the genus level) are discussed in the phylogenetic systematic concept, and cladograms are presented on the basis of the most modern cladistic revisions of each group. If one cannot have the time and/or the opportunity to search for all the original literature, it has really its advantage to dig deep into this chapter; other herpetological or systematic textbooks have less information than the 50 or so pages of this single chapter. A bibliography of 172 cited publication completes the text: a good beginning for further readings. Section II comprises the main body of the monograph: all species are illustrated with one beautiful colour photograph, described in short, and their distribution is characterised in a detailed text, and illustrated by an whole-Iberian UTM-map. Biogeographical evaluation as well as conservation status on the national and European level are also given. Another long list of references, with two discussion papers on the horizontal and vertical biogeography close this section. Sections III and IV deal separately with the herpetofauna of the Balearic, and Canary, Azoree Islands, plus Madeira and Salvajes, another 5 and 14 species, respectively. The topics of the final Section V are miscellaneous: situation of marine turtles, herpetofauna of the North African Spanish territories (e. g. Ceuta), problems with introduced species, conservation status and legislation of the herpetofauna in Spain and Portugal. In summary, I believe that this important monograph is a major step towards a modern biogeographical evaluation of the European herpetofauna, and, especially for Spanish speaking readers, it can be recommended as a good introduction into West Mediterranean herpetology as well. Zoltán Korsós
