Handbook of the Mammals of the World

HOLY ****!

Yeah, as much as I would like one of these nifty-looking books, I can't afford it.

 

Perhaps you could afford the book if you collected and sold bat guano as fertiliser.

 

Mine hasn't arrived, yet. How are the Plates ? How do you feel , about the new guy Ilian Velikov ?

 

Interesting interview with Don Wilson, about the project :
As the HMW series crosses the finish line, we look back at its course with Chief Editor Don Wilson – Lynx Edicions

 

I read on Birdforum that they are planning an Illustrated Checklist of Mammals (just as they did with the birds). The primate illustrations will be done by Ilian Velikov, a Bulgarian artist who has a beautiful style and has already contributed significantly to the Bats volume of HMW (among other field guides). One wonders why they did not have the wisdom to let the plates in the original HMW primates book be drawn by somebody who can actually draw animals.

It also makes me wonder what kind of taxonomy they will follow or whether it will be the same inconsistent approach taken until now.

 

I’m so glad I waited it out! The plates were more or less the entire reason I wanted this set, but I’ve still never had the money to spare on the volumes I wanted years later, and was hoping for either a single book dedicated to them, or a subscription based website like HBW Online (soon to be shifted to a different site and title, now). I’d happily splurge on a single book with all the plates.

 

Is the new book going to include species discovered since HBW began?

 

According to the first book of a new series of Regional Illustrated checklists from Lynx, it is said that the upcoming Illustrated Checklist of the Mammals of the World will include the most recent changes and the new species described since the publication of the respective HMW volume. It also says that they will update and homogenize the taxonomic treatment followed in the HMW series.

 

Let's hope the last sentence doesn't mean 100 species of Red Deer...

 

I got message in FB from Lynx, that they are planing "regional checklists of many regions" and I assume most of them will appear before the earlier mentioned "eagerly awaited Checklist of the Mammals of the World".

 

Looking at the sample plates of the coming soon "Mammals of South Asia" it is good to see that the new primate plates are a huge improvement. They do however stick with their hugely inconsistent taxonomy, following all the G&G splits (regardless of evidence) for the Bovids, but use the traditional approach for all the other families. E.g. Common Muntjac is not split, even though there is pretty good recent evidence and this is accepted by IUCN, but Takin are..

Mammals of South Asia – Lynx Edicions

 

Sorry to trouble you all but has anybody ordered from Lynx Ed. before and how does it work? Do they ship to India?

 

Primate plates are good, agreed.

At first look, one big omission is no detailed description of range. In practice, many mammals, especially recent splits, are best identified by range not visually. E.g. hoolocks gibbons east/west of the Chindwin River. The best would be, for rarer species, a list of reserves where it occurs/was reported. In practice, many mammals will be twitched in few known reserves, or are nowadays restricted to few particular reserves.

Following, map is often too general. Smaller map for restricted species would be better, e.g. showing e.g. only the region of Assam/Arunuchal Pradesh or the tip of Indian Peninsula and Sri Lanka. It would be similar to the Colllins Bird Guide which shows for some species only the Middle East or only the Iberian Peninsula.

 

This means, they will keep the G&G for the others too. The new primates look good and will make us buy the final Illustrated Checklist.

They will probably stick to the 9 volumes taxonomy, until vol 10. will appear

 

I don't see why not; I've ordered from them before and books were sent to UK just fine. If I recall, big books like the HMW volumes are sent by courier, but the Southern Cone book arrived by regular post I think.

 

HMW is shipped Worldwide by Lynx. It used to be free shipping, but not anymore.