The Dice Snake, Natrix tesselata: Biology, distribution and conservation of a Palaearctic species

From time to time the journal Salamandra, published by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Herpetologieund Terrarienkunde, has supplements which are produced as Mertensiella. This book is volume 18. It is devoted entirely to one species, the Dice Snake. It’s a large volume, with 469 pages, a lot of good quality illustrations, an attached DVD, more than 130 authors, 47 major articles and 10 “PhotoNotes” (which are equivalent to Short Notes in this Bulletin). Even as little as a generation ago, a herpetologist would have been astonished that such a thing was possible: it’s an indication of how rapidly the study of reptiles and amphibians has grown