The living Ovulidae

This book is the first comprehensive comparative and iconographic revision of the gastropod family Ovulidae since Cate published his famous „Systematic Revision“ in The Veliger (1973). Although we have spent six years discussing and carefully evaluating the literature, an immense number of shells and animal pictures, we are unable to give conclusive answers to all the open questions, but we both feel that we have made progress. An introductory chapter shows the most important morphological features of the ovulid animal and the shell, followed by a section on the biology and ecology of these animals. The systematic part enumerates and discusses all taxa and all the information we could gather. Colour plates depicting and discussing more than 2000 shells, and hundreds of photographs of living animals illustrate the diversity of the group.