Current state of knowledge of the Maltese non-marine fauna

Abstract

In 1993 I published the first review of the non-marine fauna of the Maltese Islands in 80 years (Schembri [P1], 1993), the only previous comprehensive review of this type being the work of Giovanni Gulia presented in 1913 (Gulia, 1914). I am glad to report that in the past 10 years my review has become outdated in many places; I say ‘glad’ because it means that in the interim period, research on the Maltese fauna has continued and new discoveries have been made, while existing information has been revised. My previous review is sufficiently out of date to warrant a revised ‘new edition’, and this is what I will attempt to do here. In the following work, I have kept the basic structure of my previous review and, where no changes were necessary, also more or less the original text. However, I have completely rewritten those parts where new information has rendered the previous text obsolete. I have opted to do this rather then just review the new information that has become available since 1993 in order that the present work stands alone and the reader does not require to keep referring back to the previous review, not least because the volume in which this was published is not out of print. I have strived to give as complete a picture of our current state of knowledge of the Maltese non-marine fauna as possible, but given the vastness of the literature and the disparity of the sources, I am certain that there are omissions. For these I apologise to the reader but I nonetheless trust that this work will be of some utility.