Larsen TB   2005

The Butterflies of West Africa. 900 pages in two volumes.

28 x 21 cm. Hardback. 130 colour plates depicting more than 3.800 specimens. This book attempts to summarize all that is known about the nearly 1,500 butterfly species known from West Africa, the fifteen countries that stretch from Senegal and Mauritania on the Atlantic to Nigeria and Niger in the east, touching also on the extreme western parts of Cameroun (Mauritania, The Gambia, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Bénin, Nigeria, and Niger). It is the result of more than ten years of intensive personal research. The fauna of West Africa accounts for well over a third of all butterflies in the Afrotropical biogeographical region, and about one in twelve of all butterflies known worldwide. Just 25 years ago the area covered was believed to have just about 1.000 species.