Myriapods are the only major zoological group for which a modern encyclopedic treatment has never been produced. In particular, this was the single major gap in the largest zoological treatise of the XIX century (Grasse’s Traite de Zoologie), whose publication has recently been stopped. The two volumes of “The Myriapoda” fill that gap with an updated treatment in the English language. Volume II deals with the Diplopoda or millipedes. As in the previous volume, the treatment is articulated in chapters dealing with external and internal morphology, physiology, reproduction, development, distribution, ecology, phylogeny and taxonomy. All currently recognized suprageneric taxa and a very large selection of the genera are considered. All groups and features are extensively illustrated by line drawings and micrographs and living specimens of representative species of the main groups are presented in color photographs.
A section of sixteen color plates completes the picture of the external morphology of millipedes and gives an account of their amazing mega-diversity. The book is well illustrated with near 300 light, TEM and SEM micrographs and line drawings. Near 15 tables summarize the leading information, including a final large table giving an overview of the suprageneric millipede taxa. Each of the [...] chapters is a deep and updated review, fully referenced with a list of references at the end (80 pages in all, about 1,600 titles). All the co-authors are renowned experts, morphologists, ecologists, taxonomists and biogeographers, leading specialists on the topics they discuss. To conclude, coupled with the first volume of the monograph, this book is an excellent tool of reference not only for myriapodologists, but also for those who are interested in the biology, ecology and evolution of soil arthropods and soil biology in general. We are, therefore, grateful to Sandro Minelli for finally completing his editorial project, planned long time ago, of an updated treatise on Myriapoda (as he tell us in the preface of the first volume), thus filling a nearly century-long gap in the modern zoological literature about this intriguing group of arthropods. Marzio Zapparoli, in: Fragmenta entomologica, 48 (1): 87-88 (2016).
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