Borroto-Páez, R., C. A. Woods, and F. E. Sergile (eds.).2012. Terrestrial Mammals of the West Indies: Contributions. Florida Museum of Natural History and Wacahoota Press, Gainesville, Florida, 482 pp. ISBN 978-0-9653864-7-0

Abstract

R. Borroto-Paez, C. A. Woods, F. E. Sergile (eds.). 2012. Terrestrial Mammals of the West Indies: Contributions. Florida Museum of Natural History and Wacahoota Press, Gainesville, Florida, 482 pp. ISBN 978-0-9653864-7-0, price (hardbound) $35.00. Terrestrial Mammals of the West Indies is not a typical “Mammals of …” book. It is an edited volume with contributions covering a wide variety of topics pertaining to Antillean mammals, including, but not limited to, systematics, biogeography, paleontology, zooarchaeology, genetics, anatomy, functional morphology, ecology and natural history, parasitology, conservation, and studies of captive animals. This book is the 1st attempt to synthesize more than a century of information on the terrestrial or nonvolant mammals of the West Indies, including both living and fossil species, as well as mammal remains from archaeological sites. In the Introduction , the editors emphasize that for purposes of this book, their definition of “terrestrial” mammals does not include bats. They suggest that the inclusion of bats would have doubled the length of the current work, but also hint at a possible future volume on West Indian chiropterans. A treatise on the bats of Cuba, including both living and extinct species (Silva Taboada 1979), is of comparable length to the present volume. Excluding bats, the extant terrestrial or land mammals of the West Indies constitute a unique but rather depauperate fauna, with just 2 orders and 2 families, both Antillean endemics, the Solenodontidae in the Soricomorpha and the Capromyidae in the Rodentia. Cuba has the richest fauna with 9 species of capromyid rodents in the genera Capromys, Mesocapromys , and Mysateles and the primitive insectivore Solenodon cubanus . The capromyid Plagiodontia aedium and the solenodontid Solenodon paradoxus comprise the fauna from Hispaniola. Species of the capromyid genus Geocapromys are known from Jamaica (G. brownii ) and East Plana Cay in the southern Bahamas (G. ingrahami ). A capromyid from Little Swan Island and 3 sigmodontine cricetids, 1 from Jamaica and 2 from the Lesser Antilles, are known from modern specimens (skins and skulls), but went extinct in …