Mammal Diversity Database

Accurate taxonomy is central to the study of biological diversity, as it provides the needed evolutionary framework for taxon sampling and interpreting results. While the number of recognized species in the class Mammalia has increased through time, tabulation of those increases has relied on the sporadic release of revisionary compendia like the Mammal Species of the World (MSW) series. Here, we present the Mammal Diversity Database (MDD), a digital, publically accessible, and updateable list of all mammalian species, now available online: https://mammaldiversity.org. The MDD will continue to be updated as manuscripts describing new species and higher taxonomic changes are released. Starting from the baseline of the 3rd edition of MSW (MSW3), we performed a review of taxonomic changes published since 2004 and digitally linked species names to their original descriptions and subsequent revisionary articles in an interactive, hierarchical database. The MDD provides the mammalogical community with an updateable online database of taxonomic changes, joining digital efforts already established for amphibians (AmphibiaWeb, AMNH’s Amphibian Species of the World), birds (e.g., Avibase, IOC World Bird List, HBW Alive), non-avian reptiles (The Reptile Database), and fish (e.g., FishBase, Catalog of Fishes).

Development for this work is funded primarily by the American Society of Mammalogists (ASM), with initial logistical and planning support (2017-2019) provided by the NSF Vertlife Terrestrial grant. Logistical support is now provided by the Biodiversity Knowledge Integration Center at Arizona State University.

The ASM Biodiversity Committee compiles and maintains the MDD, curating regular releases that are downloadable in comma-delimited format. Downstream goals include expanded hosting of ecological, trait, and taxonomic data. Overall, this initiative aims to promote the ASM’s role as a leader in high quality research on mammalian biology.

Version 1.0 (1 Feb 2018; described in https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyx147). We found 6,495 species of currently recognized mammals (96 recently extinct, 6,399 extant), compared to 5,416 in MSW3 (75 extinct, 5,341 extant)—an increase of 1,079 species in about 13 years, including 11 species newly described as having gone extinct in the last 500 years. We tabulate 1,251 new species recognitions, at least 172 unions, and multiple major, higher-level changes, including an additional 88 genera (1,314 now, compared to 1,226 in MSW3) and 14 newly recognized families (167 compared to 153). Analyses of the description of new species through time and across biogeographic regions show a long-term global rate of ~25 species recognized per year, with the Indomalayan biogeographic region as the overall most species-dense for mammals globally (127.1 species/km²), followed by Australasia-Oceania (90.6) and the Neotropics (85.1).

References

BURGIN, C. J., J. P. COLELLA, P. L. KAHN, AND N. S. UPHAM. 2018. How many species of mammals are there? Journal of Mammalogy 99:1–14.

WILSON, D. E., AND D. M. REEDER. 2005. Mammal species of the world: a taxonomic and geographic reference, 3rd ed. 3rd edition. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD.

# FILES:

MDD_v1_6495species_JMamm.csv -- CSV version of the MDD v1.0 list of recognized species of mammals (extant, domestic, and recently extinct).

SupplementaryDataS1_BurginColellaKahnUpham2018_updated.xlsx -- Excel version of the MDD v1.0 taxonomy including additional tabs of metadata and the geographic breakdown of species by realm.