ABSTRACT

West Southwest: Vertebrate Life in Southern California celebrates an amazingly diverse fauna with description, evolutionary background, geographic insight, and ecological detail. Southern California is a vast region of very different habitats – all with an abundance of unique species of plants and animals and all within a day’s drive. Southern California shares an evolutionary history with other areas of the Southwest, but it has its own identity. The book is not a field identification guide. Instead, the book provides the evolutionary history of species groups, details where the individual species occur and their habitat preferences, and how they avoid the perils of predation and human impact.

 

Key Selling Features:

  • Summarizes the evolutionary background and ecology of southern California’s vertebrates: freshwater fish, amphibians, turtles, snakes, lizards, birds and mammals.
  • Reviews the history of southern California’s biotic communities from the coast to the deserts and their association with other areas of the Southwest.
  • Discusses vertebrate design and how it affects performance and lifestyle.
  • Extends and enhances the content of regional field identification guides.
  • Includes 120 maps, figures and color plates.

section Section I|53 pages

Fundamentals

chapter 1|8 pages

The Land

chapter 2|8 pages

The Climate

chapter 4|13 pages

The Three Pillars of Natural History

section Section II|80 pages

Settings

chapter 5|8 pages

Vegetation Past and Present

chapter 6|70 pages

Plant–Vertebrate Communities

section Section III|188 pages

Vertebrates

chapter 7|22 pages

Amphibians

chapter 8|6 pages

Turtles and an Overview of the Amniotes

chapter 9|43 pages

Lepdiosaurs—Squamates and Tuatara

chapter 10|29 pages

Birds

chapter 11|75 pages

Mammals

chapter 12|8 pages

The Ice Age Mammals