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Together, the three volumes will list every one of the 55,000-plus known species of New Zealand’s animals, plants, fungi and micro-organisms.

These volumes are affiliated with Species 2000, an international scientific project with the long-term goal of enumerating all known species on Earth into one seamless list – the Catalogue of Life, a kind of online telephone directory.

To date, only New ���سԹ�has compiled a checklist of its entire biota. Approximately 52% of this country’s species are endemic – found only in New Zealand’s freshwater, marine, and land environments. We have a responsibility to the global community to preserve this unique heritage or taonga. But further than that, all of our species – including many of the naturalised aliens included in the survey – are important to New Zealand’s economy, ecology, and well-being.

Written for the advanced high-school and tertiary-level reader, these volumes are also intended to be a kind of ‘Cooks Tour’ of the kingdoms and phyla of life that will, it is hoped, provide an appreciation of the wondrous diversity of nature.

The three-volume work New ���سԹ�Inventory of Biodiversity offers a first full review of the country's entire known species of animals, plants, fungi and micro-organisms.' Paloma Migone, Waikato Times

Dr Dennis Gordon is a Principal Scientist at the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, where he led a marine biodiversity research group for 13 years. He was trained as a marine biologist, and his major research interest is the systematics, biology, and phylogeny of living and fossil Bryozoa.

Beyond this group, Dennis has a broad interest in all of life, and serves on the international teams that are respectively co-ordinating the production of the Catalogue of Life and the World Register of Marine Species.

He is immediate past chairman of the Royal Society of New ���سԹ�Committee on Biodiversity and a current member of the New ���سԹ�Association of Scientists council.

In 2005 he was recipient of the prestigious New ���سԹ�Marine Sciences Society Award for his lifetime contribution to the advancement of marine science in New Zealand.