I. Karanovic: Recent Freshwater Ostracods of the World: Crustacea, Ostracoda, Podocopida

Abstract

Karanovic’s book on the freshwater ostracods of the world is the first comprehensive description of the taxonomy and distribution of freshwater ostracods who are prolific inhabitants of all kinds of water bodies, and thus used as important ecological indicators of modern waters and as tools in palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimate research. Previous publications on freshwater ostracods provided regional overviews of ostracod taxonomy and ecology, such as the excellent book of Meisch (2000) on the freshwater ostracods of western and central Europe. Other publications covered Hungary (Daday 1900), Germany (Klie 1938), Russia (Bronstein 1947), Poland (Sywula 1974) and Great Britain (Henderson 1990). The book of Karanovic is a tremendous compilation of information on the taxonomy and distribution of recent freshwater ostracods from all continents and as such, improves the awareness of the reader with respect to less well known ostracod taxa from regions outside the traditionally well-studied European and northern American realm. The presentation of taxonomic ostracod data from less well known and long studied regions in the world, together with the information from the more intensively investigated faunas, is one of the major achievements of the book. The compilation of almost a thousand references (including approximately eighty references subsequent to Meisch’s publication on the European freshwater ostracods in 2000) enables the reader to obtain a good overview of the ostracod fauna of any specific region in the world. The book is divided into two parts, a first part providing an introduction to the morphology, anatomy and biology of recent freshwater ostracods, and a second part on their systematics. Karanovic manages to provide a global view on recent freshwater ostracods, which is probably only biased by state of research in the different regions. Readers from North America and Europe might be surprised to learn more about the great diversity of freshwater ostracods in the southern hemisphere. Another important implication of Karanovic’s book is the improved knowledge of subterranean ostracods that have already received some attention in recent years due to the work of Dan Danielopol, the book’s author and other ostracodologists. However, subterranean ostracods are still overlooked and Karanovic substantially contributes to the increasing availability of information regarding ostracods living in interstitial habitats and other underground waters with this new book and many of the author’s earlier publications. Taxonomic assignments are not always agreed upon consensually, but Karanovic’s work illuminates taxonomic assignments in need of scrutiny, discusses problematic taxonomic placements and provides suggestions for detailed revisions. Discussion of these taxonomic issues are aided by the book’s many S. Mischke (&) Institute of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Potsdam, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24/H27, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany e-mail: smischke@geo.uni-potsdam.de