Abstract
Fernando Fernandez, the editor, has made a marvelous effort to produce this high quality, inexpensive, comprehensive and well illustrated Spanish book that provides an overview of the neotropical ants from a world-wide perspective. The book is divided into 28 chapters, which are organized in six sections. There are more than 400 line drawing figures; some of them in chapter 15, however, are poor in quality. Widely known ant specialists, including E. O. Wilson, B. Bolton, and P.S. Ward, wrote some of the chapters. The first two sections treat the biology and current proposals on systematics, and biogeography of ants. Section three offers sampling protocols for use in field and data analysis for ecological and habitat monitoring studies. Likewise, this section reviews the practical procedures to start and manage an ant collection. Two chapters are dedicated to the economic importance of ants as plague or pests in rural and urban ecosystems. The remaining sections provide a synopsis of Neotropical genera, including their diagnoses, distributions, biology and taxonomic revisions, as well as an updated checklist of all extant and fossil genera of the world, including the known Neotropical species and subspecies. However, Bolton's (2003) recent synopsis should be consulted to update some changes for the subfamilies and genera. Finally, the two annexes provide an explanation of the protocol ALL to sample ground-dwelling ants and a useful list of entomological museums with major collections of ants in the Americas, and type depository collections of ants in the world. In addition, widely used abbreviations of the museums in the scientific literature as well as contact e-mails and website addresses are include in the list.
The book is not designed as a field guide. In fact, its large size (about 21 cm x 28 cm) could make it difficult to use in the field. Nonetheless, this book will soon become an obligate textbook for young scientists and graduate students, not only for those whose interests are primarily Neotropical ants but also for any tropical biologist. The low price, high quality of the information and presentation, and its worldwide perspective, also makes this book of broad interest for everyone.