Lizards of Borneo
By Indraneil Das – (2004)
83 pages; gloss art, with 118 colour photographs and 1 map.
Soft Cover: 17cm x 11.4cm.
ISBN: 983-812-080-4
Natural History Publications (Borneo) Kota Kinabalu
Borneo is one of the hot spots of biodiversity anywhere in the world with a seemingly endless array of amazing plants and animals. And Borneo’s lizard fauna is no different. Lizards (with the exception of the Komodo Dragon of Eastern Indonesia) are basically harmless to humans and in fact are of great benefit to the environment eating many annoying and damaging insects, including snails and slugs from the garden. They may also be extraordinarily colourful and ornamented and so hence one may interpret them as beautiful or perhaps less complimentary, as unusual.
At the time of writing some 109 species of lizard are known to Borneo, with 73 of these (approximately 66%) covered within the book. A checklist of the known species is presented near the front of the book. Each illustrated species has it scientific name, with the author and year of publishing in brackets, followed by brief notes on their identifying features and physical description along with, biology and reproduction, type of habitat and global distribution if known to occur outside of Borneo.
I have found this book to be quite interesting and very handy for identifying purposes and for research not just within Borneo but for the whole of Asia. It is very nicely illustrated with good quality colour photos and the text is well written and easy and simple to understand. I cannot recommend this book enough and I hope that perhaps one day the author and the publisher will get together and produce a further book covering the lizard fauna for the whole of Asia or at least all of South East Asia.
Rod Rice
Principal Reviewer
Nature & Travel Books