COWRIES AND THEIR RELATIVES OF SOUTHERN AFRICA

A Study of the Southern African Cypraeacean and Velutinacean Gastropod Fauna.

With a Supplement: A new species of Cypraeovula occurring off the northern part of the Eastern Cape, South Africa,

With notes on possible genetic relationships and oceanographic influences on its distribution

Second edition:224 pages, illustrated with over 700 colour photographs and with line drawings and distribution maps, pictorial laminated boards,a very good copy in the dust jacket.

Includes the Supplement comprising pages 225-232 in continuation of the text and is bound in laminated card wrappers. It is loosely inserted in the volume.

Editor’s note: The cowries and their relatives are among the most strikingly beautiful and enigmatic molluscs inhabiting the world’s oceans. Southern Africa, with its diverse tropical and temperate marine environments, supports an endemic cypraeacean (families Cypraeidae, Ovulidae and subfamily Pediculariinae) and velutinacean (families Veluntinidae, Triviidae and subfamily Eratoinae) fauna that is one of the richest on earth. Most previous studies concerning these two superfamilies have been limited solely to their shells, with little known about their behaviour, biology, and evolutionary relationships. Cowries and their relatives of southern Africa redresses this, providing information on their external and internal structure, developmental biology and biogeography, higher systematics and phylogeny, generic subdivision, systematics of the endemic species, predation, and pertinent concerns regarding their conservation. Phenomena such as mimicry and aberrations in shell morphology, also receive attention.

Although the primary objective of this study is to concentrate on formerly poorly known species endemic to southern Africa, Angola and Mozambique, detailed accounts of many Indo-Pacific and West African species are also provided. The more than one hundred species accounts contained in the book are accompanied by lucid colour accurate photographs of shell and animal variation, and distributional maps. Many of the species discussed were discovered and described during the past two decades. More recently, others for the first time, were recorded from this biologically unique southern African region. William Liltved, an internationally recognized authority on the systematics of the Cypraeidae, Ovulidae and Triviidae, has produced second enlarged edition of Cowries and their relatives of southern Africa (2000). In the 12 years since the first edition appeared (1989), sufficient new information and material has become available to warrant consolidation in its updated form.