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Dr. L. Lee Grismer and his son Jesse have been doing field work and systematic studies on the amphibians and reptiles of Southeast Asia for well over a decade. Dr. Grismer is a Professor of Biology at La Sierra University in Riverside California and a Visiting Professor of the Institute for Environment and Development (LESTARI), University Kebangsaan Malaysia in Bangi, Malaysia. He began studying the amphibians and reptiles of Peninsular Malaysia in 1996 and has published numerous papers on this fauna and has described nearly 50 new species from this region. His studies soon began to focus on the most poorly studied group—the lizards—and in the last seven years, Dr. Grismer and his Malaysian collaborators have discovered and described more new species of lizards from Peninsular Malaysia (35) in the last seven years than had been discovered and described in the previous 110 years. Some of these species came from the Seribuat Archipelago and composed a significant component of Dr. Grismer’s last book ”Field Guide to the Amphibians and Reptiles of the Seribuat Archipelago, Peninsular Malaysia” published in 2011.
”Lizards of Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore and their Adjacent Archipelagos” is a comprehensive study of this group’s natural history and distribution, lavishly illustrated by the author’s renown photographic skills. This book not only incorporates the scattered body of literature on Malaysian lizards from the early 1,800s to present, but is infused with a large body of information from Dr. Grismer’s meticulous field notes taken over the last 15 years. For several species in this book, the photographs and information presented on their natural history, behavior, and reproductive biology is all that is known. Explicit taxonomic keys accompanied by detailed descriptions of all 128 species allow for their easy identification. Additionally, a comprehensive, illustrated description of the environment of Peninsular Malaysia is overlaid with an insightful discussion of the biogeography and ecological zonation of its lizard fauna.
Dr. Grismer continues his systematic studies on the amphibians and reptiles of Peninsular Malaysia and other Southeast Asian regions and is currently preparing books on the snakes and amphibians of Peninsular Malaysia with his Malaysian collaborators.
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