J Mammal Evol (2007) 14:67–69 DOI 10.1007/s10914-006-9022-6 BOOK REVIEW
A New ‘Age of Discovery’ for Mammals Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference, 3rd Edition. Don E. Wilson and DeeAnn M. Reeder (eds.). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2005, 2,142 pp., 2 vols., $125.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8018-8221-4 B. D. Patterson Published online: 13 January 2007 C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2006
With the Biodiversity Crisis looming as the environmental challenge of the 21st century, a reappraisal of the globe’s mammalian diversity is noteworthy. Habitat conversion, climate change, and the flurry of on-going scientific efforts to both describe and understand the inter-relationships of mammals have quickly dated prior assessments of mammalian diversity and its status. As documented in this book, scientists have described and newly recognized an astounding 54 mammal species per year since 1982 (beyond the replacements needed for those lost to synonymy). While still modest by arthropod or fish standards, that number is remarkable for mammals. Consider that, for the last quarter century, the number of added species each year has exceeded the world’s standing diversity in most living orders! Or that the 5,416 currently recognized species is 30% more than were recognized in 1982! Only among amphibians (specifically in Anura) has there been such a drastic overhaul of biodiversity estimates (estimated as almost 35% since 1985; http://www.amphibiaweb.org/index.html). That reappraisal is even more valuable when it is produced by leading authorities in the taxa involved. Like its predecessors, the third edition of Mammal Species of the World (MSW3) is a product of the Checklist Committee of the American Society of Mammalogists. Edited by committee chair Don Wilson (Smithsonian Institution) and DeeAnn Reeder (Bucknell University), the book represents the work of 26 authors who contributed articles. Most contributions encompass one of the 29 orders recognized in this edition, ranging in size from a half-page account for the monotypic Tubulidentata to a 218-page article on the 1,116 species of Chiroptera. A predictable exception is the Rodentia: the order of 2,277 extant and historically extinct species is tackled in 13 articles covering families, a superfamily (Muroidea), and an infraorder (Hystricognathi). The muroid chapter alone, a strikingly original and meticulously documented account by Guy Musser and Michael Carleton, is 638 pages in length. Information in each account of MSW3 follows a standard format that lists sequentially: scientific name, author, year and publication details; common name; type locality, sometimes
B. D. Patterson () Department of Zoology, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL 60605-2496, USA e-mail:
[email protected] Springer
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verbatim but more often standardized; distribution, listing all range countries in which the species occurs; conservation status, denoting the most recent CITES, U.S. ESA, and/or IUCN listing for the species; any designated synonyms (including their authorship and year of publication) and recognized subspecies; and comments, which include mainly taxonomic notes that detail the rationale for the author’s interpretation, but sometimes population trends and regulatory issues. The decision to include common names must have been an agonizing one, motivated by their widespread use and acceptance by lay audiences (including even the managing authorities of CITES and other international conventions). The majority of mammal species are small and cryptic, distinguished only by specialists, and most live in places where English is a foreign language, making “common names” necessarily contrived. This edition does embrace various anglicized versions of scientific names, such as pipistrelles and thomasomys, which simplifies matters enormously, at least until reanalysis sunders genera (e.g., the various species of the Abrothrix (Cricetidae) are designated as “akodont,” reflecting their prior synonymy with Akodon and mistaken inclusion in the Akodontini). Some are simply ridiculous (the “Tailed tailess bat” Anoura caudifer). While deploring the need for listing common names in a book of such genuine scholarship, one cannot help but admire the rich indigenous vernaculars of Australia’s mammals. So extensive is each account and its documentation that a two-volume set replaces the single volumes of the first and second editions. All but one order appears in the first volume, whereas the second covers only the order Rodentia, a 345-page bibliography containing 9,373 references (more than twice the number in the second edition), and a 198-page index listing 37,378 synonyms in addition to currently recognized species and subspecies (because specific epithets were not collected and listed a second time by genus, the length of the index equals the second edition’s). Authors accustomed to proofing the two- or three-dozen citations in their own manuscripts will appreciate the scholarship that went into providing such an extensive, polyglot, and comprehensive entr´ee into the technical literature. Accounts for some poorly known groups (e.g., Cricetidae: Euneomys) also make reference to individual specimens housed in 34 museum collections in 17 countries. This feature serves to underscore that the accounts are in most cases original revisionary syntheses of each group, as much in need of bibliographic and museum documentation as any other research article. The arrangement of taxa in MSW3 follows McKenna and Bell’s (1997) Classification of Mammals: above the species level, and departures from this standard are justified by reference. Orders newly recognized in this edition include Cingulata and Pilosa (formerly combined in Xenarthra) and Afrosoricida, Erinaceomorpha, and Soricomorpha (formerly Insectivora). Among newly recognized families, Chaeropodidae is split from other peramelemorphs (not “Paramelemorphia”; p. xxvi), and Hypsiprymnodontidae (Diprotodontia) is distinguished from Potoroidae. Within the magnorder Xenarthra, Cyclopes is allocated to its own family Cyclopedidae. In Scandentia, pen-tailed tree shrews are removed to Ptilocercidae. Among the Primates, Lepilemuridae, Indriidae, Galagidae, Aotidae, and Pitheciidae are all admitted as families. The Sardinian pika, finally accorded its own family (Prolagidae), is alas long extinct. Hipposideridae (Chiroptera) is separated from Rhinolophidae. In Carnivora, the African palm civet is separated as its own family, Nandiniidae, and the Malagasy carnivores are distinguished as Eupleridae. The river dolphins (Cetacea) are now separated into Platanistidae and Iniidae. While additional phylogenetic resolution has guided all of these nomenclatural changes, nowhere has progress been more dramatic (and nomenclatural changes more extensive) than among muroid rodents. Newly recognized families in MSW3 include Gliridae, Platacanthomyidae, Spalacidae, Calomyscidae, Nesomyidae, and Cricetidae, which have altered the assignments of 169 genera and 776 species. Phylogenetic insights and derivations are also reflected in the host of non-obligatory Linnaean categories employed throughout the volume. In Musser and Carleton’s Muroidea, genera are explicitly allocated to subfamily, tribe, and in places division, as are taxa in Hutterer’s Springer
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Soricomorpha, while Groves’ Primates employs parvorders through subfamilies. A notable exception to this trend is provided by Simmons’ Chiroptera, which employs no taxa between the order and family levels—the flux of perspectives on higher-level relationships prohibits codifying them into nomenclature. Generally, the contributors to these volumes choose a justifiable nomenclatural course, offering us the details of recent phylogenetic analyses, but only those stable enough to transcend on-going and future analyses. By any measure, this is a landmark publication. The increased size and ancillary content relative to MSW2 virtually guarantee that future editions will be electronic updates of this work. Already the editors have made the classification available for download from the Smithsonian’s website (http://nmnhgoph.si.edu/msw/MSW3.xls) to serve as validation files for collection databases or for spell-checker dictionaries. The potential to link the edition’s rich taxonomic information with the extensive biological details of Walker’s Mammals of the World (also published by Johns Hopkins) and with the IUCN’s assessments of species status and threats (http://www.redlist.org/) is rich. The editors and authors have rendered the rest of us an enormous service in making this information available. In addition, Johns Hopkins deserves credit for keeping its cost within reach for the substantial audience such a crucial reference must have—no serious scholar of mammalian diversity can afford to be without it.
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