Mammals of Mexico

Abstract

Ceballos, G. (ed.). 2014. Mammals of Mexico . Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland, 974 pp. ISBN 13:978-1-4214-0843-9, price (hardbound), $150.00. Ceballos’ and Oliva’s Los mamiferos silvestres de Mexico (2005) was a ground-breaking volume stemming originally from funding by CONABIO (Comision Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad) in 1992. A result of years of effort, it compiled all the available information through 2004 on the ecology, biogeography, taxonomy, and systematics of some 530 mammalian species (including distributional maps and a bibliography) in one of earth’s major biodiversity hotspots. Now, Ceballos provides us with the Mammals of Mexico , which although largely an English translation of the earlier work, updates our knowledge of Mexico’s mammals through 2011. Like its predecessor, it includes checklists and species accounts as well as an updated bibliography; it also provides a broad overview of some 200 years of research on the mammals of the region in this diverse country. Following mostly the nomenclature of Wilson and Reeder (2005), the book synthesizes the information from hundreds of workers in the field; in addition, it includes black and white photographs of skulls of most species as well as appendices with tracks of medium- and large-sized mammals. The book is divided into 5 parts; the 1st part covers diversity and conservation of Mexican mammals. In a section on global mammal species diversity, it is noted that Mexico has fully 11% of the world’s mammals; table 1 shows 544 species (up some 19 species from Ceballos and Oliva [2005]) of which 161 are endemic. However, totals for the other 18 countries in that … Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-3131, USA; e-mail: nicte.ordonez-garza{at}ttu.edu