Noted with interest

This book, part of the Habitats of the World (HotW) series by Princeton University Press, covers over 70 major habitats across Australia, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands, including freshwater and saline environments.It clearly presents the visual distinctiveness and wildlife assemblages (mainly birds) to provide readers with an accessible yet concise overview of the region's thousands of habitat types.Although not yet applied to Australian ecosystems, the authors use the International Vegetation Classification (IVC) concept in this habitat guide, thereby ensuring the relevance of this book to future IVC developments and aiding comparisons across other HotW.The book combines informative habitat descriptions with information on climate, soils, vegetation, characteristic wildlife, distribution, and conservation.The authors focus on birds, and the book is accompanied by an extensive database of bird assemblages based on habitat types.However, the guide goes further to include information on reptiles, mammals, and amphibians and is supported by hundreds of beautiful photographs, illustrations, climate diagrams, and distribution maps.Although the book's main focus is on biomes and the ecological communities that occur within them, the well-formatted index allows quick navigation to specific species.Its compact field-guide format makes what could easily become a technical ecological reference accessible to birders, naturalists, and travelers (the "Where to see" sections are particularly valuable), whereas the synthesis of vegetation and ecosystem mapping gives it considerable value for ecologists and conservationists.