Abstract:
We report on studies in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and South Africa
over the past 22 years that have yielded estimates of land-snail diversity in
the main forest types occurring in East and eastern southern Africa. When
supplemented with the results of similar research in Madagascar and West
Africa by other workers, the information provides a more detailed picture of
the patterns of land-snail diversity on the continent than was available to
Solem (1984). We describe our field methods, re-examine Solem’s (1984)
assessments of sympatric, allopatric and mosaic diversity patterns in African
forests and provide a review of overall species number at continental, regional
and country-wide scales, and in the main African forest biomes that have
been studied.
