Mammal species of the world: a taxonomic and geographic reference. Third edition, volume 2

The dynamic, rapidly changing state of mammalian taxonomy, documented by an enormous literature, long hampered the compilation of a detailed, complete world checklist. It was only about a century ago that Trouessart (1898-99, 1904-5) produced the first complete appraisal of all mammals of the world. A more modern compilation was provided when E. P. Walker and colleagues brought out, in 1964, the first edition of Mammals of the World. This compendium, now in its sixth edition (Nowak, 1999), is arranged systematically (with considerable supplementary natural history data) to the generic level, and later editions list the species in each genus in addition to furnishing an illustration of at least one member of each genus. V. E. Sokolov based his Systematics of Mammals, published in Russian (1973-79), on Walker's Mammals of the World. He provided a list of species with a brief summary of geographic distribution in each generic account. Corbett and Hill (1980,1991) listed the species of the world, abbreviated distributions, common names, literature citations to major regional distributional works, and some additional revisionary works where appropriate. McKenna and Bell (1997) provided a complete phylogeny of mammals above the species level, including fossil as well as recent forms. That work provided a starting point for this edition of Mammal Species of the World, and deviations from their arrangement are noted in the comment sections of the accounts that follow. In the short time since the publication of McKenna and Bell (1997), an explosion of literature based on new techniques of molecular systematics has resulted in wholesale changes in our thinking about mammalian phylogeny.Those changes are reflected in the following pages, but this work is primarily a checklist at the species level, and higher-level relationships are used primarily to provide structure rather than to reflect phylogeny.
This volume, like previous editions (1982, 1993), will undoubtedly be used by many readers who are not systematic mammalogists. Do not be alarmed or disheartened by the debate over definition of species limits within many groups of mammals. Differences of opinion are aired in the comments sections to emphasize areas needing additional taxonomic study. Mammals are no worse off in this regard than other groups of animals and in fact are probably better known than most, with the possible exception of birds. One recurring suggestion from users of previous editions spurred us to include common names in this edition. The publication of the first complete list of common names of mammal species of the world (Wilson and Cole, 2000) made this possible. Contributors to this edition used those names as a starting point but were urged to adopt alternatives if there were compelling reasons to do so. As a result, this volume can be viewed as a second edition of Wilson and Cole (2000).