Mollusca of the Dahab Region

About this book

Language: English with trilingual abstract in English, Arabic, and Hebrew

The molluscan fauna of the Dahab region on the southeast coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt was studied during 13 visits between 2003 and 2018. Initially this effort was to provide students and researchers with a reference collection of this region. In 2009 the macro-molluscan records had reached 470 different species. After taking the first 100 ml sediment sample which was searched for microscopic shells this number increased to almost 600. In total 11.2 litres of sand were sampled from different locations throughout the Dahab region. Altogether 1066 molluscan species including 781 Gastropoda, 250 Bivalvia, 16 Polyplacophora, 12 Cephalopoda and 7 Scaphopoda were found. This accounts for approximately half of the species currently known from the entire Red Sea.

In addition to species identification a comprehensive discussion is given, focusing on difficult families and small species (microshells) which are often neglected in other shell books. Photographic evidence is provided through more than 4570 images on 225 plates and over 320 in situ photographs of living animals and their habitats which makes Dahab the best documented place in the Red Sea concerning the diversity of the molluscan fauna.

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