Aphanius anatoliae exists in several different colour forms within our study area © Barbara Nicca

There won’t be any news, articles or species updates for the next 10 days or so since we’re off on a field trip to central Turkey to look for some of the endemic freshwater fishes and other creatures to be found there!

Turkey forms a land bridge between the continents of Europe and Asia and is the only country in the world covered almost entirely by three of the 34 global biodiversity hotspots, which in this case are known as the Anatolian, Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, respectively.

This has resulted in spectacular biodiversity with the country sometimes referred to as the ‘biodiversity superpower of Europe’.

We’ll visit Lake Salda in Burdur province, home to a killifish found nowehere else in the world © Haluk Özözlü

It’s home to at least 9000 species of vascular plant of which around one third are endemic while large mammals such as brown bear, wolf, Caucasian lynx, caracal, striped hyena, and possibly even leopard roam the remoter regions.

Our interest lies more with all creatures small and slimey though so we’re hoping to find endemic Aphanius killifishes plus loaches, cyprinids, shrimp and amphibians among other things.

Here’s a map with the area we’ll be covering highlighted in blue:

View Turkey 2013 in a larger map

Although the SF website will basically be on hold for the duration we’ll try and post one or two snippets via Facebook and Twitter over the course of the trip and will of course publish a full report at some point.

So, apologies for any inconvenience caused, wish us luck and we’ll be back soon!

The SF Team