Lost World’s biodiversity uncovered

The book about the biodiversity of the Conan Doyle’s Lost World will be issued in a couple of weeks. The title is “Biodiversity of Pantepui, the Pristine Lost World of the Neotropical Guiana Highlands” and is published by Elsevier-Academic Press.

Pantepui is a remote archipelago of sky islands with unique biodiversity and endemism patterns that constitutes one of the few pristine regions remaining in the planet. The biodiversity and ecosystems of this lost world have been generated by purely natural ecological and evolutionary processes, which turns Pantepui into a natural laboratory to study the origin and evolution of Neotropical biomes. The following video provides an outlook of the Pantepui landscape.

The book is subdivided into four parts, namely (i) general aspects, (ii) the photosynthetic world, (iii) animal diversity and (iv) biodiversity conservation, and the following chapters:

1. Definition and characterization of the Pantepui biogeographical province
2. Climatic and ecological history of Pantepui and surrounding areas
3. Pantepui as a dynamic biogeographical concept
4. Origin and evolution on the Pantepui biota
5. Algae
6. Vascular plants and bryophytes
7. Plant communities
8. Aquatic insects
9. Butterflies
10. Scorpions
11. Land snails
12. Amphibians and reptiles
13. Birds
14. Mammals
15. Vertebrate parasites
16. Conservation of Pantepui: between complex emergency and climate change
17. Pantepui and global warming

The front matter can be freely downloaded and the book can be purchased here.

Reference

Rull, V., Vegas-Vilarrúbia, T., Huber, O. & Señaris, C. (eds.). 2019. Biodiversity of Pantepui, the Pristine “Lost World” of the Neotropical Guiana Highlands. Elsevier-Academic Press, London. ISBN 978-0-12815-591-2.