Updated Mammalwatching Checklist @ August 2020
The latest version of my global mammal checklist is available here and also on Scythebill too.
This update differs a little from previous ones. I focussed on improving the common names of species, and the taxonomy of the overall list, rather than recent changes to the Redlist. Many thanks to those who helped with this project including Murray Lord, Vladimir Dinets, Paul Carter and in particular Don Roberson who was a great help. Any mistakes are very much mine!
In the course of the work I also added about 20 new species, some of which I saw in the Handbook of the Mammals of the World. I guess the two new sugar glider species in Australia and Humboldt’s and Collins’s Squirrel Monkeys – split from Common Squirrel Monkeys – are most likely to have an impact on people’s mammal lists.
I did not – as yet – include the possible Pampas Cat split though suspect that will be included next time.
I included new scientific names for many species (again largely thanks to the Handbook of the Mammals of the World).
I deleted a handful of species and also removed a number of extinct species that haven’t been recorded for over 100 years so are unlikely to feature on anyone’s mammal lists!
If you want to see changes since the last list then scroll to the bottom of the “Changes over time” worksheet.
The worksheet “Divergences from the IUCN list” shows where this list differs from the Redlist.
I know I am not alone in taking advantage of lockdown life to update my mammal list. Yay COVID. So I hope this is useful and might even produce a couple of ‘armchair ticks’.
All comments and criticisms welcome.
Jon
8 Comments
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Vladimir Dinets
Curtis: IUCN list has a bug: if a widespread species has an endangered subspecies, the common name of that subspecies is often listed as the name for the entire species. Mostly happens with North American taxa.
Manuel: contrary to the papers you cite, being of hybrid origin doesn’t mean red and Algonquin wolves are not 1 or 2 full species. We now know that there is a lot of mammalian species of hybrid origin, including, for example, Clymene dolphin and kipunji.
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Manuel Ruedi
Dear Jon,
Thank you so much for this incredibly detailed checklist. Really amazing work, again!
I have though a couple of remarks for some taxa (by far not an exhaustive list, but just a few):
– About Canis lycaon, I am a bit surprised that you justify your (difficult) choice based on an old (2012) reference supporting this species, while the “definitve” answer about this controversial species was given in 2016, and supports its hybrid origins (like for the red wolf) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/how-do-you-save-wolf-s-not-really-wolf . Perhaps you have other sources of infos, but to my (European and evolutionary) view, both red and Eastern wolfs should be considered as subspecies, at best.
– Regarding Miniopterus fuliginosus, there are now ample evidences that this taxon from Nepal is highly diverging from schreibersii, both genetically and morphologically (one of the first was supporting this view https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228428141_Molecular_studies_on_the_classification_of_Miniopterus_schreibersii_Chiroptera_Vespertilionidae_inferred_from_mitochondrial_cytochrome_b_sequences , but we also published morphological and genetical evidences for its distinction, as well as the very divergent Miniopterus magnater (e.g. https://threatenedtaxa.org/index.php/JoTT/article/view/5264 ); Mi. schreibersii is definitely restricted to the Western Palearctic region as discussed in the recent paper about the new species Mi. maghrebensis https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262065874_A_new_species_of_the_Miniopterus_schreibersii_species_complex_Chiroptera_Miniopteridae_from_the_Maghreb_Region_North_Africa .
– Myotis hajastanicus is not distinct from M. mystacinus from the Caucasus see Dietz C, Gazaryan A, Papov G, Dundarova H, Mayer F (2016) Myotis hajastanicus is a local vicariant of a widespread species rather than a critically endangered endemic of the Sevan lake basin (Armenia) Mammalian Biology – Zeitschrift für Säugetierkunde doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mambio.2016.06.005
– Myotis aurascens is now convincingly considered as a junior synonym of Myotis davidii, see e.g. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/436112 ; the later apparently was introgressed by My. mystacinus in the Balkans and the Near-East, but would be present there as well (see Coraman E, Dundarova H, Dietz C, Mayer F (2020) Patterns of mtDNA introgression suggest population replacement in Palaearctic whiskered bat species R Soc open sci 7:191805 doi:10.1098/rsos.191805).
– Finally, you could now add Myotis crypticus and Myotis zenatius to your list, according to our recent paper https://bioone.org/journals/acta-chiropterologica/volume-20/issue-2/15081109ACC2018.20.2.001/Two-New-Cryptic-Bat-Species-within-the-Myotis-nattereri-Species/10.3161/15081109ACC2018.20.2.001.full ; notice that two other names corresponding to these two species are not available https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jbi.13665
Take care
Manuel
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Mattia from Italy
I am very skeptical about it (a few minimal morphological differences plus mitochondrial dna), but this is the research paper:
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Jon Hall
Hi Curtis – on the common names, are you talking about Scythebill? If so I can work to fix that – the order of preference is Scythebill follows the order in which I list alternative common names in my XLS, which in turn comes from the IUCN. So yes Eastern Fox Squirrel and Northern Flying Squirrel ought to move to the front of the queue. I can fix that for next time. If you notice more please let me know.
Good spot on Zeledon’s Mouse Opossum – that ought to be on the list. I think IUCN still has it as a subspecies of Mexican M O .. but that is just because they haven’t gotten around to an update.
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Curtis Hart
I recently copied my data over from Avisys. The addition of Rothschild’s Porcupine was helpful, another species I can’t resolve is Zeledon’s Mouse Opossum Marmosa zeledoni. The literature I can find seems to support it, it’s just not on IUCN.
I noticed some of the unfamiliar common names had changed, but Bryant’s Fox Squirrel for Eastern and Carolina Flying Squirrel for Northern still are unfamiliar to me. Are these new or just subspecies that are some how becoming the common name?