This massive volume, published at a very reasonable price, will be a useful addition to any reference library. It is a new edition of a book first published in 1984 and contains information gathered as a result of research into mammalian species which has taken place since then. All the entries have been updated and many completely rewritten.
This is not an encyclopaedia arranged alphabetically. The species described are arranged by a taxonomic order beginning with carnivores, such as lions and tigers, followed by seals, whales and dolphins, dugong and manatees, primates, tree shrews, flying lemurs, subungulates, hoofed mammals, rodents, rabbits and hares, elephant shrews, insectivores, and bats, and finishing with marsupials, platypus and echidnas.
The books starts with an introductory chapter, which sets out the various orders of mammals using modern taxonomy, and explains their evolution and ecology. One problem facing the editors was that modern research has led to a number of changes in accepted taxonomy but, on the whole, the editors have coped with this. They have used the taxonomy set out in Mammalian Species of the World, by Wilson and Reeder, published in 1993, and have made the necessary adjustments to admit species discovered since 1993, working on the advice of those authors who strongly supported some departure from the 1993 classification. Many scientists have contributed to this volume and over 4,600 species are covered.
Written in a style which makes it accessible to a wide range of readers, each entry provides, in some detail, information of a species’ or group’s physical characteristics, distribution and habitat, behaviour, social organisation, foraging behaviour, breeding biology, evolutionary history and longevity. All the entries are beautifully illustrated in colour, some of the illustrations showing real incidents in the lives of mammals. David Macdonald is Director of Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit and makes a point of including, for each species, information on its conservation status and how its environment is being affected, generally by human activity, causing habitat destruction and, in many cases, putting the mammal on the critically endangered list. So the book will be of interest to all those working in environmental science.
This volume brings together a wide diversity of information, presented lucidly and entertainingly, and will appeal to zoological scientists and the general reader, who will find the glossary at the end of the volume of considerable help. There is an excellent index and a bibliography in which the entries are listed under the main groups, e.g. carnivores, marine mammals, primates, etc. Apart from the excellent photographs, there are many diagrams and charts which help to explain the characteristics of the mammals described.
