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For a naturalist and limnologist, the Pantanal has the extreme
fascination of an "ultima Thule" ofundisturbed and little known
wilderness. The scientific world at large is almost unaware of its
richness. In an age when scientific research is overstretched
because of lack of funds and the hands are full of
urgentconservationtasks, it is the amateurtourist who unveils the
beauty and the interestof this largest wetland ofthe world. I had
the privilege of an outsider, well enough familiarized with Brazil,
its language and scientific life, but independent enough of the
daily chores of a local academic career. For nearly 20 years I have
been a faithful sci- entific tourist to this subcontinent. My
academic liberty gave me the unique opportunity to try to
synthesize in English the knowledge about Brazilian environments
little known abroad. My first suchendeavourhas been"Soore- tama -
the Atlantic Rain Forest of Brazil". Dealing now with the Pantanal,
I wish to pay tribute to the many Brazilian colleagues who under
dire and often precarious conditions have advanced the knowledge
related to the Pan- tanal. By reviewing their many reports and
papers written in Portuguese and bringing them to the knowledge of
the international scientific community, I believe that I am doing a
useful service. First of all, I have to thank Prof. Vera Lucia
Imperatriz Fonseca, the Head of the Department of General Ecology
at the University of Sao Paulo, for providingme during the years,
the academic basefrom which I couldoperate.
There are few achievements of modern man which can compare to the
Suez Canal. In Egypt-the land of the most famous wonders of
antiquity-the Suez Canal was built as the first technical wonder
ofthe industrial revolution. Ferdinand de Lesseps was a man
straddling two epochs-the romantic utopism of Saint Simon and the
modern world of technocracy. The gigantic project was at its start
shouldered by the crowds of tens of thousands of forced laborers
still available and ended as a show-piece for modern mechanical
earth-moving techniques. The canal builders themselves were still
polyhistors in the old sense: engineers cum-zoologists; naval
officers-cum-geologists; diplomats meddling with chem istry. During
the four generations of the existence of the Suez Canal, the
fateful professional narrowmindedness became progressively worse.
The engineers con tinued their work in and around the Canal, but
they became oblivious and unresponsive to the environmental impact,
to the fascinating changes in the biotic scenery which they were
producing with their own hands."
This book is an attempt to present a comprehensive view on the
aquatic biogeog raphy of a small but very dynamic and complex area
of the globe. Luckily, this area, called here the Levant, has
attracted much interest in the past and is being increasingly
studied in the present. The interphasing between the knowledge of
the historical and formative processes and that of the recent
distributional aspects is fairly good. The recent years saw also a
widening effort which expressed itself in several symposia and
monographic books. Therefore I considered it possible to treat the
whole subject of the aquatic biogeography of the Levant
singlehandedly rather than in the presently widespread manner of an
edited book. I am keenly conscious of the shortcommings of my
approach of presenting much second-hand information. Possibly this
is being compensated by the fact that this book has a more coherent
structure and eventually a clearer scientific message. The effort
spent in synthesizing the data from the widely different sources
hopefully pays off in a presentation which is more easily
comprehended by the average reader. For the suspicious reader, I
would recommend to read first the closing chapter of this book in
which the quintescence of this book and its message is presented in
a summariz ing manner."
For a naturalist and limnologist, the Pantanal has the extreme
fascination of an "ultima Thule" ofundisturbed and little known
wilderness. The scientific world at large is almost unaware of its
richness. In an age when scientific research is overstretched
because of lack of funds and the hands are full of
urgentconservationtasks, it is the amateurtourist who unveils the
beauty and the interestof this largest wetland ofthe world. I had
the privilege of an outsider, well enough familiarized with Brazil,
its language and scientific life, but independent enough of the
daily chores of a local academic career. For nearly 20 years I have
been a faithful sci- entific tourist to this subcontinent. My
academic liberty gave me the unique opportunity to try to
synthesize in English the knowledge about Brazilian environments
little known abroad. My first suchendeavourhas been"Soore- tama -
the Atlantic Rain Forest of Brazil". Dealing now with the Pantanal,
I wish to pay tribute to the many Brazilian colleagues who under
dire and often precarious conditions have advanced the knowledge
related to the Pan- tanal. By reviewing their many reports and
papers written in Portuguese and bringing them to the knowledge of
the international scientific community, I believe that I am doing a
useful service. First of all, I have to thank Prof. Vera Lucia
Imperatriz Fonseca, the Head of the Department of General Ecology
at the University of Sao Paulo, for providingme during the years,
the academic basefrom which I couldoperate.
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