Biogeography and Ecology of Bulgaria includes 22 chapters by 28 authors united by the single theme: biogeography and ecology of Bulgaria. From the single-celled organisms in the Black Sea sand to the endemic cave crustaceans, from the mountain glacial relict insects to the most diverse bird fauna in Europe, the unique fauna of Bulgaria has been a subject of study of mostly Bulgarian zoologists for more than a century.
This is the first monograph in English broadly addressing all vertebrate and many key invertebrate groups of Bulgaria, their faunistics, origin, geographical and ecological distribution, and conservation issues are addressed by the experts on each group.
1. Introduction
2. Landscapes and climate of Bulgaria
3. Florogeographic elements and evolutionary trends in the Bulgarian flora
4. Vegetation and phytogeography: A brief characteristic
5. Terrestrial mammals of Bulgaria: Biogeographic and ecological patterns of distribution
6. Fauna, zoogeography, and ecology of Birds in Bulgaria
7. Amphibians and reptiles in Bulgaria: species diversity, vertical distribution, zoogeographical analysis, and conservation
8. Fauna and distribution of fishes in Bulgaria
9. Fauna, ecology, and zoogeography of dragonflies (Insecta, Odonata) in Bulgaria
10. Fauna and zoogeography of the orthopterid orders (Embioptera, Dermaptera, Mantodea, Blattodea, Isoptera, and Orthoptera) in Bulgaria
11. Biogeography of the endemic Carabidae (Coleoptera) in the central and eastern Balkan Peninsula
12. Fauna and zoogeography of jewel beetles (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) in Bulgaria
13. Stygofauna of the fresh waters in Bulgaria
14. Fauna and zoogeography of Myriapoda in Bulgaria
15. Fauna and zoogeography of haplogyne spiders (Araneae) in Bulgaria
16. Fauna and zoogeography of wolf spiders (Araneae, Lycosidae) in Bulgaria
17. Fauna and zoogeography of spiders of the family Linyphiidae (Araneae) in Bulgaria
18. Spatial niches of Opiliones (Arachnida) from Vitosha Mts., Bulgaria
19. Fauna and zoogeography of scorpions (Arachnida: Scorpiones) in Bulgaria
20. Fauna and zoogeography of mollusks in Bulgaria
21. Testate amoebas and monothalamous foraminifera (Protozoa) from the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast
22. Terrestrial cave animals in Bulgaria
23. Biodiversity and ecology of the Bulgarian Black Sea invertebrates
Dr. Victor Fet is a Professor of Biology at Marshall University, West Virginia, USA. He was a co-editor of Biogeography and Ecology of Turkmenistan and authored dozens of research publications on animal biogeography, systematics and evolution. He is also one of the world's leading experts on scorpions and one of the authors of the Catalog of Scorpions of the World.
Dr. Alexi Popov is the Director of the National Museum of Natural History, Sofia, Bulgaria. He authored and co-authored 94 research publications on insect faunistics, taxonomy, ecology, and conservation. He served as a Secretary and/or the Member of the Editorial Board of Historia Naturalis Bulgarica, Acta Entomologica Bulgarica, and Journal of Neuropterology. In the project "Fauna Europaea", Dr. Popov leads the team of 30 entomologists working on the insects of Bulgaria.