ISSN 1827-9635 (print) © Firenze University Press ISSN 1827-9643 (online) www.fupress.com/ah Acta Herpetologica 8(1): 79-80, 2013 Book Review: Roberto Sindaco, Alberto Venchi, Cristina Grieco. The Reptiles of the Western Palearctic. 2. Annotated checklist and distributional atlas of the snakes of Europe, North Africa, Middle East and Central Asia, with an update to the Vol. 1. Edoardo Razzetti Museo di Storia Naturale, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Piazza Botta 9/10, I-27100 Pavia. E-mail: razzetti@unipv.it The Reptiles of the Western Palearctic is the second volume of an ambitious project: to create a checklist and an accurate atlas for all the reptile species of this complex biogeographic region, a huge area of nearly 27 millions of square kilometers that includes about 690 reptile spe- cies. Gathering together all these data is a task that would deter anyone except Roberto Sindaco and colleagues. The realization of this project involved nearly twenty years spent traveling in remote areas for fieldwork (from the volcanoes of Canary Islands to the steppes of Kazakh- stan) and thousands of hours entering taxon/locality records from obscure literature into a database, georefer- encing them, and plotting data on maps. The outcome of all these efforts is between my hands: a thick 17 × 24 cm hardcover volume printed on nice coated paper with the logos of Societas Herpetologica Italica and Societas Europaea Herpetologica on it. From the perspective of snakes, the Western Palearc- tic includes regions that enthralled the zoologists since the Age of Enlightenment and other that were largely over- looked. Actually, by an herpetological point of view, Europe is probably the most investigated region of the world, as the earliest accounts go back to Aristotle, and comprehensive attempts of summarizing the knowledge of its ophidiofau- na were repeatedly published more or less in every decade of the past century. Conversely, little is known about the snakes of large areas of North Africa (Algeria, Libya) and Asia (e.g., Syria, Lebanon, Georgia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Oman, Iran) where the relevant data are scattered among hundreds of scientific papers or were drawn from individ- ual field notes and collections housed in several museums. The Reptiles of the Western Palearctic begins with six general sections that represent a slightly modified and updated version of the same chapters in the first volume (Sindaco and Jeremčenko, 2008):. The first and the sec- ond detail the geographical extent and habitat types with the help of few (16) nice photographs of different land- scapes; I wished a deeper coverage of these sections but this would be probably beyond the scope of this volume. Next are “Material and methods” with a list of the infor- mation provided in each species account and how the 52.000 records were selected and mapped. The status of the herpetological knowledge in the area is presented in the subsequent chapter with a list of reference text for each country and, sometimes, useful comments on out- dated and inaccurate sources. Next are the chapters about the biodiversity and biogeography which probably repre- sent the strongest point of this book since the distribu- tional records here presented are an invaluable tool for this kind of analyses and the authors master these topics particularly well. Conservation issues are the subject of the next chap- ter; these are dealt with heavy emphasis on shrinking and fragmentation of natural habitat, introduction of alien species, IUCN red list categories and legislation that leaves few room for “emotional” issues like pet trade or collection for scientific purposes. The next part is the Annotated Checklist which repre- sents the core of the book, a bulk of 350 pages considering the associated distribution maps (184 figures) and the col- our plates. From the start, it is clear that the authors’ objec- tive is to gather together all published information about 80 Book Review taxonomy, biogeography and distribution for each snake species. References are cited in the text, which greatly improves the book’s usefulness and there is also a further list of maps data sources for each species. Every account starts with reference to the original description and type locality. This could be not particularly interesting for most of the readers but it must be stressed that it’s quite unusu- al as most of the books usually just report author, year of description and the “restricted” type locality (that is often an unjustifiable emendation like for many species dealt by Robert Mertens). There is a distribution map based on a one by one degree grid for each genus (inserted in the text) and a map for each species (these are lumped together in a separate chapter); all the maps report the global distri- bution of taxa even if extralimital distribution include few dots and are often delimited just by a generic line. I would like to spend few more words about the 342 images of snakes which cover most of the species treated in the book, even some rare taxa that I wasn’t able to see depicted before; the quality of the images is outstanding with just two exceptions: Gloydus himalayanus and Mon- tivipera latifi. My opinion is that Reptiles of the Western Palearctic by Roberto Sindaco, Alberto Venchi and Cristina Grieco is an invaluable reference for professional and amateur herpetologists, and I feel that it will be considered a ref- erence text for the next decades; anyway readers should keep in mind that this book do not follow the general trend of most recent herpetological monographs so you will never find any identification keys or any data about the ecology or biology as the emphasis is just on taxono- my and distribution. As final remark have to admit that I tried to find general mistakes and misspelled scientific names but to my shame the only ones I could find were included in the foreword that I personally wrote. The book can be purchased at the cost of € 62.00 (or € 52.00 for S.H.I. members) at the publisher’s website (http://www.edizionibelvedere.it/). REFERENCES Sindaco, R., Jeremčenko, V.K. (2008): The Reptiles of the Western Paleartic. 1. Annotated checklist and distri- butional Atlas of the turtles, crocodiles, amphisbaeni- ans and lizards of Europe, North Africa, Middle East and Central Asia. Edizioni Belvedere, Latina. Acta Herpetologica Vol. 8, n. 1 - June 2013 Firenze University Press The oogenic cycle of the Caspian bent-toed gecko, Cyrtopodion caspium (Squamata: Gekkonidae) in Iran Vida Hojati1*, Kazem Parivar2, Eskandar Rastegar-Pouyani3, Abdolhossein Shiravi1 Altitudinal effects on life history parameters in populations of Liolaemus pictus argentinus (Sauria: Liolaemidae) Joel Antú Gutiérrez1,*, Carla Piantoni2, Nora R. Ibargüengoytía1,3 Recent cryptic extinction of squamate reptiles on Yoronjima Island of the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan, inferred from garbage dump remains Yasuyuki Nakamura1,*, Akio Takahashi2, Hidetoshi Ota3 Trophic niche and feeding biology of the Italian wall lizard, Podarcis siculus campestris (De Betta, 1857) along western Mediterranean coast Marco A.L. Zuffi*, Chiara Giannelli Novel, non-invasive method for distinguishing the individuals of the fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) in capture-mark-recapture studies Goran Šukalo1,*, Sonja Đorđević2, Dragojla Golub1, Dejan Dmitrović1, Ljiljana Tomović2,3 Going out tonight? When insular Hierophis viridiflavus breaks the Whip Snakes Rules Delaugerre Michel-Jean First evidence of a paedomorphic population of the smooth newt (Lissotriton vulgaris) in the Czech Republic Václav Gvoždík1,2, Veronika Javůrková4, Oldřich Kopecký5,* No detection of chytrid in first systematic screening of Bombina variegata pachypus (Anura: Bombinatoridae) in Liguria, northern Italy Stefano Canessa1,*, An Martel2, Frank Pasmans2 Status of the European pond turtle, Emys orbicularis (Reptilia: Testudines: Emydidae) in Vorarlberg, Austria Andreas Kleewein1, Günther Wöss2 Comparative cytogenetics of two species of ground skinks: Scincella assata and S. cherriei (Squamata: Scincidae: Lygosominae) from Chiapas, Mexico Riccardo Castiglia1,*, Alexandra M.R. Bezerra2, Oscar Flores-Villela3, Flavia Annesi1, Antonio Muñoz4, Ekaterina Gornung1 Polydactyly in the Tyrrhenian wall lizard (Podarcis tiliguerta) Antigoni Kaliontzopoulou1,*, Daniele Salvi1, Verónica Gomes1, João P. M. C. Maia1,2,3, Panagiotis Kaliontzopoulos4 Book Review: Roberto Sindaco, Alberto Venchi, Cristina Grieco. The Reptiles of the Western Palearctic. 2. Annotated checklist and distributional atlas of the snakes of Europe, North Africa, Middle East and Central Asia, with an update to the Vol. 1. Edoardo Razzetti ACTA HERPETOLOGICA Journal of the Societas Herpetologica Italica