New Zealand is the first country to have compiled a checklist of its entire living and fossil biota. This trilogy provides a review and inventory of New Zealand's entire living and fossil biodiversity - an international effort involving 238 New Zealand and overseas specialists and the most comprehensive of its kind in the world. Together, the three volumes list every one of the approximately 56,120 living and 14,700 fossil species of New Zealand's plants, animal, fungi, and micro-organisms. These volumes are affiliated with Species 2000, an international scientific project with the long-term goal of enumerating all described species on Earth into one seamless list - the Catalogue of Life, a kind of online biological telephone directory.

Author Biography

Dennis P. Gordon is a principal scientist at the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, New Zealand, where he has led a marine biodiversity research group for more than 13 years. He also serves on the international teams that respectively coordinate the production of the Catalogue of Life and the World Register of Marine Species.