Biodiversity Of Western Rhodopes

This is the first attempt to synthesize current understanding of biodiversity in the great European hot spot. A diverse group of international researchers offers perspective on biodiversity at the level of the gene, species and ecosystem, including contributions on temporal change. Biological groups include plants, mammals, spiders and humans, cave-dwelling organisms, fish, aquatic invertebrates and algae.

From single-celled organisms in Black Sea sand to endemic cave crustaceans, from mountain glacial relict insects to the most diverse bird fauna in Europe, the fauna of Bulgaria has been a subject of study for more than a century. This is the first English language survey of all vertebrate and many key invertebrate groups of Bulgaria, their faunistics, origin, geographical and ecological distribution, and conservation issues.

Updated and revised edition

In this volume 268 species are covered. Many of the genera have caused serious problems in identification, but based on the larger number of specimens illustrated on the 25 colour plates, the species can now be identified much more easily.

The present catalogue summarizes the information on species composition and distribution of ants in Bulgaria, known until 2010 from literature and museum collections. The authors have worked intensively on Bulgarian myrmecofauna for the last 10 years. The Bulgarian myrmecofauna currently comprises 163 species from 40 genera and 6 subfamilies. The species list accounts synonyms and the respective publications they were used in, as well as all known localities in Bulgaria. Known localities are grouped by geographical regions and maps with concrete localities or regions for each species are provided. The conservation status of threatened ant species is discussed. The catalogue of Bulgarian ants may be of interest to myrmecologists, ecologists, biogeographers, conservationists and any zoological library.