INTRODUCTION 



With the publication of my turtle checklist (Iverson, 1986) it was finally possible to 

 begin preliminary analyses of the patterns and correlates of species richness in turtles on a 

 global scale. As a first step I prepared species density maps for each turtle family by 

 outlining the range of each turtle species as plotted in Iverson (1986), and manually 

 overlaying those range maps to produce species richness isopleth (= species density) maps. 

 This was undertaken with the clear realization that the taxonomy and distribution of turtles 

 in some areas of the world was still not well studied (especially southeast Asia), but that 

 general patterns of species density would not change radically even with much further 

 study. 



The species density maps that were generated revealed a number of interesting 

 zoogeographic patterns, and stimulated a pilot study of the correlates of maximum 

 freshwater and terrestrial turtle species density in 42 river basins across five continents 

 (Iverson, 1991). However, because of journal space limitations, it was not possible to 

 publish the species density maps along with that analysis. Those maps are reproduced here 

 in hope of stimulating further analyses of the distribution and zoogeography of turtles. 

 The maps appear in the same order as the taxa appeared in Iverson (1986). 



LITERATURE CITED 



Iverson, J. B. 1986. Checklist with Distribution Maps of the Turtles of the World. 



Iverson Publ., Richmond, Indiana. 

 Iverson, J. B. 1991. Global correlates of species richness in turtles. Herpetol. J. (in 



press) 



Fig. 1. Species richness of the family Carettochelyidae on New Guinea and Northern Australia. 



