Jean Pierre Pointier Livres

The objective of this book is to bridge a gap in the freshwater malacology of Venezuela which includes native, endemic and introduced species. A special effort has been set on species playing the role of intermediate hosts of important trematodiasis infecting cattle and humans in Venezuela. Gastropods are the most important group of molluscs including 49 species of which 11 may be considered as endemic, 28 as native and 10 as introduced. Bivalves include 16 species of which 3 may be considered as endemic, 11 as native and 2 as introduced. A state of the art is presented for each species: morphological description including shell morphology, anatomy of the reproductive system, phylogenetic data and genetic diversity when available, type of habitat and ecology. Since many of the treated species are distributed in large parts of Southern and Central America this book delivers an useful tool for the determination of freshwater molluscs in most parts of Central and Southern America.

Biological invasion is one of the major problems in tropical ecosystems. The freshwater ecosystems of the Lesser Antilles are no exception, and the mollusc fauna provides numerous examples of invaders. Interestingly large-scale and fast change in these ecosystems, including eutrophication, paved the way to a build-up of species diversity: the number of species about doubled over the last 50 years with about 31 species now, and brand-new communities have arisen. These introductions have been extremly well documentedin Martinique and Guadeloupe, showing that new species are arriving almost on a yearly basis. In the case of the Lesser Antilles, bioinvasions therefore led to anaccumulation of biodiversity rather than an erosion. It should also be highlighted that some of the mollusc newcomers are potential vectors of human and cattle disease. It is therefore of prime importance to be able to identify mollusc species as precisely as possible, not only to evaluate epidemiological risk, but also to show the dynamics of freshwater snail communities in their ecosystems. This guide should be helpful in this respect.

Contrary to the very high species richness found on Cuban land snails, freshwater molluscs are much more scarce. This book figures and describes 33 gastropod and 9 bivalve feshwater species knonw to occur on Cuba.